Still At Large

ICANN-News

2006-02-26T16:12:00.000-05:00

Please adjust your bookmarks. This blog is being retired. A new blog has been created at http://www.icann-news.blogspot.com that is providing daily ICANN news and commentary.

ICANN & VeriSign agree to screw registrants

2006-01-31T16:49:00.000-05:00

What a world we live in. Two litigants, ICANN and VeriSign, have agreed to settle their costly litigation by taking money out of our pockets. Nice way to settle a dispute.

I don't favor granting monopolies the right to unjustifiably raise their prices, so I have launched a petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/pricesup/petition.html

Let's see what effect a grassroots campaign can have.

Forming an At-Large Supporting Organization

2005-12-20T11:37:00.000-05:00

Today I sent off this note to the Chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee:

Vittorio,

Please forward this basic proposal to your associates on the ALAC:

1. Supporting Organizations are ICANN Structures that through a Council elect representatives to the ICANN Board.

2. Supporting Organization Councils are populated by distinct groups (in the GNSO those distinct groups are the six Constituencies).

3. The At-Large Study Committee, having found broad support, recommended the creation of a Supporting Organization for the At-Large (the ALSO).

4. The ALSO and its Council can be populated by distinct groups. Those distinct groups would be the certified at-large structures and an all-inclusive Assembly for non-affiliated individuals).

5. The distinct groups of the ALSO through their Council can elect representatives to the Board just as the GNSO constituencies through their Council elect representatives to the ICANN Board.

6. The At-Large Study Committee recommended that one third of the Board be populated by the At-Large (five out of fifteen Board members).

7. The ALSO will have a five regions structure. Each region will elect a representative to the Board.

This basic proposal offers an indirect election methodology as a path forward -- the same path that is used by other Supporting Organizations -- this serves to answer the Board's concern over the feasibility of global elections.

In my view, it is time to start fighting for the representation that is our due. Please let me know the views of your peers.

Wendy Seltzer on ALAC

2005-11-29T14:10:00.000-05:00

In a post to the ALAC list, Wendy writes:
"Since I'll miss the first of the "ALAC Strategic Review" sessions, let me share a few thoughts by email -- and with the public list. I hope we will have a serious discussion of whether ALAC, as envisioned by the ICANN bylaws, can ever be an effective voice for the public in ICANN. We have tried, over several years, to work within the directives of the ALAC charter, and yet we in North America still find lack of interest from broad segments of the public in joining ALSs -- and interest from individual members of the public for whom ALSs as described do not serve an effective role. The experience from other regions may differ, but for Internet users in the U.S., I think the model is fatally flawed. Discussion of our plans for the future should include asking ourselves what impact we have had within ICANN; whether a reconfigured ALAC could better serve the interests of at-large; or whether there are other ways to give individual Internet users a voice in ICANN policymaking."

IRC ICANN Vancouver

2005-11-29T12:48:00.000-05:00

Robert Guerra on the cpsr governance list writes: wanted to let all of you know that there's an IRC chat channel set up for the ICANN meeting now in Vancouver.
details are as follows:
- irc.freenode.net
- channel : #icann

CFIT Complaint Posted

2005-11-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

The Antitrust complaint against ICANN lodged by CFIT has been posted. In addition to the lawsuit, CFIT has filed papers seeking a restraining order preventing the contract from being signed in the interim. The following documents were filed in support of CFIT's application for a restraining order:
Application for the Temporary Restraining Order
Memorandum in Support of the Temporary Restraining Order
Draft Order
Declaration of Michael Geist
Declaration of Keith Butler
Declaration of Richard Chambers
Declaration of Tony Farrow
Declaration of Taryn Naidu
The judge has not yet accepted CFIT's request for a restraining order, and has provided VeriSign and ICANN until 4 p.m. (PST) on November 29, 2005 to file submissions in response.

New Risk for Registrants

2005-11-29T10:31:00.000-05:00

Name Intelligence's Jay Westerdal writes in opposition to the newly posted WHOIS Operational Point of Contact proposal -- excerpt:
" Registrants could not stress enough that they use the expiration date field daily. Domain Registrants rely on this date field to be uniform and the registry output is the only place it can be found that is uniformly the same. If this proposal got ratified as it stands registrars such as Schlund and Melbourne IT are on the record for saying they would stop showing the expiration date field altogether in their own registrar output! This would leave registrants with no PUBLIC way to determine when to renew their domain or when it expired. The impact on Registrants would be huge."

ALAC Agenda

2005-11-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

ALAC At-Large Planning Forum -- 09:00 - 11:00
Fraser Room Westin Bayshore Vancouver, BC
* Welcome
* Status report on At-Large organizing and advocacy
* At-Large Advisory Committee Internal Review report
* GNSO Review and ICANN Strategic Planning - Implications for At-Large
* Discussion of what *At-Large’s* strategic plan should contain – what is the best way forward for the global At-Large community in ICANN?

One has to wonder why the issue of "representation" for the At-Large is never on the ALAC agenda...

WDND Complaint Online

2005-11-29T09:55:00.000-05:00

The World of Domain Name Developers Inc. that filed just suit against ICANN and VeriSign has posted on-line their
COMPLAINT FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
(1) Conspiracy in Violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act;
(2) Illegal Maintenance of Monopoly in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act;
(3) Attempted Illegal Maintenance of Monopoly in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act;
(4) Conspiracy to Monopolize in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act;
(5) Unlawful Restraint of Trade in Violation of the Cartwright Act;
(6) Unlawful and Unfair Business Practices in Violation of California Business & Professions Code Section 17200;
(7) Unfair Business Practices Inconsistent with Status of Non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation in Violation of California Business and Professions Code Section 17200

Anti-Phishing Panel Discussion

2005-11-29T08:58:00.000-05:00

Notification of Presentation to Registrars Constituency on Thursday at 5:00 pm -

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) cordially invites attendees of the Vancouver ICANN meeting, particularly the Registrar Constituency to a panel discussion on the current headline issues of Phishing, Phraud and Botnets. We will be presenting valuable information on
the scale of these problems and their effects on the domain registration system and registrars. Additionally, we'll cover the latest techniques used by these criminals to defraud consumers and domain registrars, as well as best practices and new ideas for combatting them. The panel will include members of the APWG who are on the front-lines of the anti-phishing fight, along with peers from the registrar community who have successfully implemented programs to
prevent and quickly eliminate fraudulent registrations abusing their services. We hope to use this opportunity to give you valuable tips that you can implement right away to be able to eliminate abuse on your services. We also wish to start discussions on procedures and
policies that the entire registration community can work on to make it harder for criminals to so thoroughly abuse the Internet via the domain name system. This is designed to be an open discussion with plenty of input from the assembled audience to get good ideas on the
table. The APWG wishes to include the domain registration community on the team dedicated to making the Internet a safer place for all to use, keeping the momentum moving forward for its continued health and growth.

Settlement Workshop Agenda

2005-11-29T08:52:00.000-05:00

Workshop on the Proposed VeriSign Settlement - today
11:30 a.m. - 14:30 p.m. Grand Ballroom A-C Westin Bayshore Vancouver, BC

Proposed Agenda
1130 Welcome
1135 - 1215 Perspectives from ICANN Stakeholders (short summary statements from ICANN constituenciesand advisory committees)
1215 - 1300 Open microphone for individual participant comments
1300 - 1400 Thematic discussion and identification of common themes and issues, including:
- Pricing and Renewal
- New Registry Services and Policy Development
- Funding and Budget Mechanism for ICANN
1400 - 1430 Developing consensus (this session will be supported by rapporteurs and real time blogging of key themes to be presented in the last segment for discussion and general agreement, if possible, of the attendees/participants.

Solving the WHOIS Problem

2005-11-29T08:47:00.000-05:00

Ross Rader writes: "There’s simply too much in the way of personal data and exploitable data inside the whois system to allow this to continue any further. With this in mind, a group of like-minded registrars got together in Mar del Plata to discuss possible approaches to solving the various problems. The result of this discussion is a proposal called “Implementing Operational Point of Contact”." Thanks to the registrar community for taking the lead on this issue.

Go Daddy Group Statement

2005-11-29T08:33:00.000-05:00

The Go Daddy Group has released a lenghty statement on the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement putting forth a large number of salient and actionable points. Their statement concludes with the following paragraph:
"We are encouraged by the fact that the Board and Staff have given the community this opportunity to review the settlement, and in particularthe proposed new .COM Registry Agreement. This is certainly a step in the right direction in restoring the trust lost as a result of the un-vetted .NET agreement terms. We encourage the Board and Staff to continue working with the community to address its concerns with the proposed .COM agreement, ensuring that the principles under which the ICANN was formed are properly reflected in it and any future Registry Operator agreements."

Another ICANN Lawsuit

2005-11-29T08:03:00.000-05:00

Reuters reports: "A trade group of Internet businesses challenged a proposed settlement over control of the ".com" domain as a violation of U.S. antitrust laws in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in California. The World of Domain Name Developers Inc., asked the court to stop the nonprofit body overseeing the Internet's addressing system—the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN—from allowing VeriSign Inc. to maintain control of the lucrative ".com" domain until 2012. "

ICANN & VeriSign sued

2005-11-29T07:50:00.000-05:00

An article in Computer Business Review states:

"A new lobby group calling itself CFIT, for the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, has sued VeriSign Inc and the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers for alleged anticompetitive conduct in VeriSign's proposed .com registry contract. The Washington DC-based organization, currently believed to be membered purely by Momentous.ca, a Canadian domain name services firm, claims the deal would allow VeriSign to extend its monopoly as .com registry into adjacent markets. The proposed .com deal will come under intense scrutiny and debate at this week's ICANN annual meeting in Vancouver. The deal, which would allow VeriSign to raise the price of a .com by 7% a year, has already been hit by unprecedented public criticism.

Momentous, via CFIT, is concerned with the provisions of the deal that would dilute ICANN's powers to block VeriSign's new registry services, potentially enabling VeriSign to muscle in on Momentous's market. The proposed deal came as part of a settlement between ICANN and VeriSign of a lawsuit in which VeriSign accused ICANN of breaching antitrust law by blocking such services. ICANN, it seems, has a rock/hard-place dilemma. It is VeriSign's proposed secondary market domain auctioning service, the Central Listing Service, formerly known as Waiting List Service, that Momentous fears it will have to compete with.

Indeed, Momentous subsidiary Pool.com sued ICANN and VeriSign over the same matter two years ago, when the WLS idea was first publicly disclosed. CLS would allow VeriSign to skim off 10% of the sale price of re-registered domain names, names that were previously registered but are about to see their registration expire, or "drop", for whatever reason. Such properties often already have traffic associated with them, and are valued by domain name speculators.
Currently, dropping name registration services are the domain of a handful of retail-level service providers such as Pool.com. VeriSign's CLS could essentially make these services redundant by pre-empting them at the wholesale level. Hence the lawsuit. In the complaint, filed in the District Court in San Jose, California yesterday, CFIT alleges breaches of the Sherman Act, which governs monopolistic practices, as well as unfair competition and cybersquatting. "

GAC Opens Public Forum

2005-11-29T07:37:00.000-05:00

The ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee has opened a Public Forum. The Committee is to be commended for its effort to listen to other participants in the ICANN process.

Joint Motion on IDNs

2005-11-29T07:33:00.000-05:00

Bruce Tonkin writes to the Chair of the CCNSO:
The following is a proposed motion for the ccNSO and GNSO to jointly request that the ICANN staff produce an issues report on the topic of IDN strings related to existing top level domains. I hope that the ccNSO will consider this motion at its meeting this week. The issue will be before the GNSO Council in its meeting on Friday.

WHEREAS, the GNSO Council recognises that one of the goals of ICANN to increase the internationalisation of the domain name space.
WHEREAS, the GNSO Council wishes to liaise closely with the ccNSO with respect to the issue of localised IDN equivalents of existing gTLDs and ccTLDs, and for the purpose of jointly requesting an issues report.
The GNSO Council requests that the staff produce an issues report on the policy issues associated with creating internationalised equivalents of existing gTLDs, and second level domains within existing gTLDs.
The GNSO also requests that the staff liaise with the ccNSO to ensure that the policy issues associated with internationalised versions of the existing ccTLDs can also be considered.

Individual Users Statement

2005-11-28T21:11:00.000-05:00

A ten point statement has been issued by the Individual Users Constituency on the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement. A web form allows individual users to add their names as signatories to the document. It should be noted that individual users no longer have representation within the ICANN process (as ICANN decided to eliminate both elected At-Large directors and the elected representative structure of the DNSO General Assembly during their last "reform"). This effort therefore represents yet another initiative in the ongoing struggle to make sure that ICANN heeds the voices of the broader Internet community. We look forward to a time when ICANN affords representation to this stakeholder group.

ISPCP Statement, almost

2005-11-28T20:13:00.000-05:00

Mark McFadden writes: "The constituency put out a call for comments on the proposed versign agreements. I've seen no comments, so I decided to post my personal thoughts."

The vast majority of people impacted by the proposed Verisign settlement are connected to the Internet through the community of Internet Service Providers. Repeatedly, our constituency has stood for reliability, fairness and predictability for all of our customers - the users of the Internet - large and small. Under most circumstances we would welcome a settlement that allows ICANN to return to its core activities. The Verisign dispute has required staff, financial and community resources that could have been better used on other tasks in the last two years. Under most circumstances we would also welcome a settlement that provides a firm foundation for ICANN's finances. The uncertainty regarding income from .com has made it difficult to do strategic planning, help in the prioritization of ICANN activities, and even distinguish between what is possible for ICANN to accomplish and what is not possible. Regretfully, the ISP community within ICANN cannot welcome the current version of the settlement.

While ICANN has succeeded at putting choice and competition in the names space, we note that .com remains the dominant top-level domain. It will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. With that in mind it is essential that any new.com agreement provide fairness and equity to the entire Internet community. We believe that the .com agreement with Verisign does not meet this standard. Decisions about funding models for ICANN should not be based on individual contract negotiations with individual providers of services. The ISP community believes that ICANN would set a dangerous precedent if it based financial and strategic decisions on private negotiations with individual vendors of services.We believe that no single entity should have perpetual rights to a resource under ICANN's administrative control. There must be a system of checks and balances in place to ensure that due process and meaningful arbitration is available to users of registry services. Unfortunately, the .com proposal appears to grant Verisign unlimited control of .com without any of these safeguards. This puts the .com registry on a completely different setting than any of the other registries.

We also believe that the fundamental costs of management and operation for registries is lower each year. Unfortunately, the proposed settlement allows Verisign to increase their prices 7% per year without any review or safeguard. Regardless of whether or not Verisign intends to take advantage of this, the principle is simply wrong: prices for domain name registration should not rise in the future - the costs should be lower over time. Our customers don't work with registries to register their names - that task is in the hands of registrars. It is unlikely that registrars will be able to absorb the costs on increases in the ICANN fees or registry fees. The result is that those increases will be passed directly to the registrants. The Q&A posted by ICANN staff on the proposed agreements suggests that the 7% allowance is allowed to provide for a transition to market forces to determine prices. The ISP community notes, however, that there is no "market" when a dominant, monopoly is allowed to control a single resource. The ISP community feels that the monopoly registry service ought to have a predictable fair cost that is directly related to the actual cost of providing the administrative registry service. Allowing for incremental 7% per annum increases in unfair to our customers - many of whom have no choice but to stay in .com for business, branding or technical reasons. The ISPCP recommends the following action:- [* I leave this to further discussion *]

Noncommercial Agenda Posted

2005-11-28T19:50:00.000-05:00

The NonCommercial Users Constituency meets on Thursday (10AM to 6PM) in the Oak 2 room at the ICANN session in Vancouver; their agenda is posted below:

1. NCUC issues and strategies:
1.1. Report about Elections
1.2. Next steps with: re-register the members
1.3. New web site
1.4. New organizations from Latin America and Caribbean
1.5. NCUC and the Internet Governance Forum (Athens)

2. Icann-related issues:
2.1. Nomcom representative selections (done by Executive Committee but worth discussing)
2.2. .mobi Public Advisory Board selections (also done by EC but worth discussing)
2.3. meeting with Canadian privacy groups
2.4. Verisign - Icann settlement

.EU Sunrise Registrations

2005-11-28T15:32:00.000-05:00

From CENTR's Domain Wire Newsletter:
"EURid has announced that its first phase of registrations for the new Top Level Domain .eu will begin on 7 December 2005. This marks the start of a 4-month “sunrise”period during which only the holders of existing trademarks or other prior rights may register. Registrations for .eu will be fully open to the public from the beginning of April 2006. EURid is the independent organization selected by the European Commission to operate the new registry for ".eu". At the beginning of October 205, according to the data EURid made available, 475 companies and organisations in 40 countries completed the procedure and are recognised as .eu registrars."
For a complete overview of the .eu timetable, visit http://www.eurid.org

Letter to the GAC

2005-11-28T13:51:00.000-05:00

Freelance journalist Kieren McCarthy writes to the GAC:

"Dear Mr. Tarmizi,

The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN is at a turning point in its history, having recently been recognised by the world's governments as the main forum in which to discuss many of the issues surrounding the Internet. As you yourself have publicly acknowledged as chair of the GAC, an integral part of this endorsement will be reform of the committee itself. Discussion over what shape these reforms should take and how they should be implemented is due to take place at ICANN's conference in Vancouver this week. I would like to argue very strongly in favour of one reform that would not only enhance the GAC's role but also lend it greater credibility in the eyes of the world. That is: to end the practice of holding closed GAC meetings and instead allow interested observers to sit in on all meetings of the GAC and report on its deliberations.

One of the most striking features of the recent World Summit process, culminating in this month's meeting in Tunis, was the benefit derived from free and open dialogue between all stakeholders. This openness, and the inclusion of civil society, was remarked upon by all, not least United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, as a step in the right direction and something of lasting advantage to all parties.The philosophy of a multi-stakeholder process with free and open dialogue was also explicitly endorsed through countless mentions in the Tunis Summit final documents.

I would very much like to see the GAC continue in this spirit of co-operation and allow non-participatory observers into all meetings. What's more, I am convinced that it is in the GAC's own interests to relax its rules. The dispute over Internet Governance saw the world's governments meeting publicly several times in order to discuss a highly contentious matter. The result of this real-world process was that many of the arguments previously put forward by governments to retain closed meetings of the GAC were effectively demolished. There were no disruptions. Rather, a far greater understanding of governments' perspectives was fostered.

There was no inaccurate or misleading reporting of events within the meetings. In actual fact, by having the meetings open, a certain degree of balance was achieved when the implications of decisions made inside were selectively represented by various parties outside in order to sway public opinion. There were at least no doubts over what people had actually said.There is also little reason for governments to be anxious or uncomfortable about publicly expressing their views. In part thanks to WSIS, observers are now well aware of individual government's perspectives.

The huge educational process that all sides went through now means that participants are able to state their views without fear of being misunderstood.At the same time, there are several clear advantages to holding open meetings.For one, they would provide instant accountability and put valuable pressure on participants to co-operate with one another in a constructive manner, to everyone's benefit.They would produce greater understanding of governments' position on matters of vital importance. Everyone without exception accepts that governments have an important role to play in the Internet. As a result, the better understood governments' views are, the more efficient decision-making processes can be expected to be.Plus of course, open meetings would increase the GAC's credibility in the eyes of the public, and eliminate the fear that secret deals are being done behind closed doors.

With the Internet now the subject of global, widespread review, there is a large, genuine and legitimate interest in all its decision-making processes. With the GAC a fundamental part of this, not only would it be beneficial to open up meetings, but failure to do so in the light of recent events could be viewed as a retrograde step.I therefore ask that in your capacity of chair of the GAC, you review, and prompt committee members to review, the policy of closed meetings."

ICANN's IPC Statement

2005-11-28T10:37:00.000-05:00

The Intellectual Property Constituency appreciates this opportunity to comment on the proposed settlement agreement between ICANN and Verisign, and in particular on the proposed revised .com registry agreement that forms part of this settlement.

IPC applauds the efforts of ICANN and Verisign to achieve an amicable resolution of the legal disputes between them. A successful settlement should plug, to a significant degree, the draining of limited ICANN resources into litigation. To the extent that this resource drain is responsible for ICANN’s shortfalls in critical areas such as (but not limited to) contract compliance and enforcement efforts, IPC calls on ICANN to re-direct those resources constructively and efficiently. We believe the freeing up of these resources for such critical but apparently neglected tasks may be the most important consequence of the settlement for copyright and trademark owners in their relationship to ICANN and to the Domain Name System.

Beyond this, IPC has identified the following areas where the interests of its members may be directly affected by the settlement. In general, these are the areas in which further questions need to be answered, or more concrete commitments or reporting obtained. Of course, this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, and as we participate in the further discussion within ICANN about the settlement and the proposed new .com agreement, we hope to learn more that may result in additions to (or deletions from) this list.

1. Impact on ICANN finances: As we understand it, the registry fees set forth in the proposed new .com agreement are likely to have an impact on ICANN in two main ways. First, the budgetary resources ICANN can expect to have available in recent years will be dramatically increased. Second, a much higher proportion of ICANN’s revenue will come from a single source -- Verisign – in comparison to the current system, in which fees paid by registrars make up the bulk of ICANN’s revenue. The effect of these changes on ICANN is almost certain to be significant and may well be profound.

In order to assess this impact, it would be useful for ICANN to present to the community some projections about the size and sources of the ICANN budget over the next few years, first under the current system, and second under the funding system contemplated by the proposed .com agreement. Of course both sets of projections are subject to a number of assumptions, but it should be possible to get at least a general picture of the magnitude of the shift.

If in fact we are correct that ICANN will, after this settlement, have much greater revenue and be much more dependent on a single source for that revenue, IPC believes that this calls for fundamental changes in the way ICANN budgets, prioritizes, and spends. Much greater transparency and accountability will be necessary than under the current system. The perception – justified or not – that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” can only be dispelled through a system in which ICANN budget and priority decision are shielded, as much as possible, from manipulation by its sole major funder. We believe it essential that the much larger pie be divided up with much greater input from ICANN’s constituencies, especially the GNSO constituencies and particularly the user constituencies, including IPC, whose members (as gTLD registrants) are the ultimate source of this funding. Indeed, the significant changes in ICANN’s funding levels and sources may call for significant restructuring of ICANN itself. In other words, we believe the Board should recognize that approving this agreement may usher in the era of ICANN 3.0.

2. Process for approval of new registry services: IPC representatives to the GNSO Council were deeply engaged in the process of devising procedures for the approval of new registry services (indeed, an IPC proposal provided the original template for these procedures). We are engaged in a comparison between those procedures, as developed in the Policy Development Process, and the procedures put in place in the proposed new .com agreement. We welcome input from the Board and staff on their views of this comparison.

3. Fate of Appendix W: In an appendix to the current .com agreement, Verisign promised to invest at least $200 million in research, development and infrastructure improvements, a “substantial proportion” of this prior to November 2007. Verisign also pledged to prioritize in this effort the design and development of “a Universal Whois Service that will allow public access and effective use of Whois across all Registries and all TLDs.” Appendix W does not appear to be carried forward in the new agreement. IPC believes Verisign should account to the community for its actions to carry out Appendix W before the new .com agreement takes effect. We also ask whether Verisign has made a similar commitment to invest in improvements of the .com registry, and to move toward greatly improved Whois service, under the new agreement; if so what the commitment entails; and if not, why it should not be expected to do so as a condition of extending its .com franchise virtually in perpetuity.

4. Traffic Data: Section 3.1(f) of the proposed new .com agreement allows Verisign to make commercial use of traffic data regarding domain names for almost any purpose, and without any obligation to follow the procedure for new registry services with respect to such uses. This very broad entitlement could raise concerns about competition, protection of proprietary activities, and personal privacy, that could impact on IPC members, their business associates, and their employees. This traffic data could be an extremely valuable commercial asset, and IPC believes further discussion may be warranted about whether it should be allocated to Verisign virtually without restrictions, obligations or commitments.

ICANN Registrars Statement

2005-11-28T09:39:00.000-05:00

We, the undersigned registrars, recommend against ICANN signing the proposed.com Registry Agreement. The following reflects those issues that are of foremost concern to registrars:

1. New Registry Services -- The proposed .com contract locks ICANN and VeriSign in for three years on aversion of the consensus policy covering the standards and process forconsideration of new registry services. The new registry services consensus policy process that recently was approved by the ICANN board is untested, and it is likely that the ICANN community will need to refine and improve it after it is implemented. A three year lock will unnecessarily handcuff ICANN and the ICANN community. We recommend the deletion of Sections 3.1(b)(v)(B) and 3.1(b)(v)(C), and allowing the existing ICANN policy development and refinement process to be used during the term of the agreement.

2. Registry Agreement Renewal -- According to its own Bylaws and the Memorandum of Understanding betweenICANN and the United States Department of Commerce, one of ICANN's core missions is to promote competition. We understand that the current .com contract contains a "presumptive renewal" provision, which by its nature hinders competition. The proposed .com contract, however, goes much farther than the existing contract by strengthening the presumptive renewal and termination provisions on behalf of VeriSign, thereby making it virtually impossible for VeriSign to lose the .com registry and impossible to reap the benefits of competition. VeriSign should be appointed as the administrator of the .com registry, not its owner. We recommend reverting from Section 4.2 of the proposed .com agreement to the renewal terms of Section 25 of the current .com agreement, which requires a six month review of a "Renewal Proposal" provided by VeriSign and only under terms that are in "substantial conformity with the terms of registry agreements between ICANN and operators of other open TLDs. . ."ICANN also should strengthen the termination provisions currently contained in Section 6.1 of the proposed agreement by using the relevant text from Sections 16(B-E) of the current agreement.

3. Registry Fees -- The proposed .com contract would permit VeriSign to unilaterally raise registration fees by 7% per year. The existing .com contract and all gTLD registry agreements (other than the .net agreement with VeriSign, which was entered into without community input in violation of ICANN's Bylaws) require the registries to cost-justify any price increases. In an industry where the economics suggest that fees should be going down when there is competition, it is particularly troublesome and anti-competitive to grant a monopolist or a single source provider the unilateral right to increase costs without justification. Unfortunately, these fee increases would result in cost increases to individual registrants. We note that in the recent competitive process for .net, VeriSign significantly lowered its registry fees. There is no reason for unilateral cost increases for the larger .com registry. We recommend that the Board delete the current text of Section 7.3(d)(ii) and replace it with Section 22(A) of the current .com agreement requiring VeriSign to justify and ICANN to approve any proposed fee increase. If there is a dispute between ICANN and VeriSign over a cost increase, ICANN should have the right to seek competitive price proposals from other registry operators to ensure that the ICANN community receives the benefits of competition.

4. New ICANN Fees -- ICANN and VeriSign propose a new ICANN fee that would be assessed onVeriSign and passed on to the registrars. This fee would result in excess of approximately $150 million dollars to ICANN, and would be an end run around the existing ICANN budget approval process. As proposed, ICANN staff has removed an important check on the ICANN budget process. All ICANN fees that impact registrants should be subject to the ICANN budget approval process and should not only be the subject of negotiations between VeriSign and ICANN. In addition to the changes suggested in number 3 above, we recommend the removal of Sections 7.3(g-h) in the proposed contract. Any transaction fees that ICANN needs to collect from registrars (and hence registrants) should be assessed through the current transaction fees charged by ICANN to registrars and be subject to the existing budget approval process. While we understand the desire to finalize the litigation, it should not be done so without a sufficient review process nor at the expense of major tenets of ICANN's mission. In its current form, it is a bad settlement for ICANN, the ICANN community, and the public-at-large. We, therefore, urge the ICANN Board to take advantage of the six month review of a "Renewal Proposal" contemplated in the existing .com agreement, which doesn't expire until November 2007. The Board should use this time to review the complicated contracts in their entirety, have a public comment period commensurate with the importance of the issue, and make the changes necessary to improve the agreement.

Signatories to this Statement --AAAQ Inc, Ace of Domains, Active 24, Ascio, AvidDomains, Blue Razor, Bulkregister, CoolHandle Hosting, CORE, CSIRegistry, Directi, Domain Bank, Domain Contender, Domain Name Sales Inc, DomainClip, DomainHip, DomainPeople Inc, Domains Only, DomainSystems, Inc., DotRegister, Dotster, Easy DNS, Encirca, Enom, EPAG, GMO, GoDaddy, Hosting.com, Intercosmos, Joker.com, Key-Systems, Melbourne IT, Misk.com, Moniker Online Services, Name Intelligence Inc, Name.com, Namebay, Namesecure, NameScout Corp, NameShare, NameStream.com Inc, Network Solutions, Nominalia, PSI-USA Inc, PSi-Japan, RallyDomains, Register.com, Register.it, SpA, SaveMoreNames.com, Schlund+Partner, Spot Domain LLC, SRSPlus, Total Registrations, Tucows, Vivid domains, Wild West Domains!, #1 Host Kuwait Inc!, #1 Host Malaysia, Inc.!, #1 Host United Kingdom, Inc!!!, $0 CostDomains

ICANN: Out of "Resources"

2005-11-27T18:06:00.000-05:00

A new ICANN Staff-issued report to the GNSO (prepared by Maria Farrell) reveals the existence of "Non-active projects: approved but not resourced". Specifically the document points to a PDP that was passed by the GNSO Names Council on 13 January 2005 for which ICANN has no available resources -- the issue: "Problems caused by contention for domain names made available by a gTLD registry". Each PDP involves a staff-prepared Issue Report that according to the bylaws is supposed to be completed within 15 days. Yet even after announcing the hiring of five new staff members, ICANN claims it still doesn't have the resources to draft a simple report. Pretty pathetic, don't you think? If Louis Touton was still with the organization we could have fired a good two dozen staff members and still have gotten the job done.

Chatting with ICANN's Joi Ito

2005-11-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

ICANN Board member Joi Ito writes on his blog: "I'm at the ICANN meeting in Vancouver this week. You can often find me on the #joiito IRC channel. I need to give the face to face meeting priority, but I'll try to provide background and contextual information for anyone who is attending or watching the webcast and is interested." As the Board is there to "listen", this is a great opportunity for those of you with issues to have yourselves heard.

ICANN's NCUC on Settlement

2005-11-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

The complete NCUC statement is here.
On this forum, too much comment is focused on the specifics of VeriSign and in particular the alleged rate increase. We believe that more general and more important process issues are at stake. The Noncommercial Users Constituency sees a risk that private bargaining between ICANN staff and its contractors will replace the policy development process of ICANN's constituencies. While we do not believe that every change in registry contracts should be subject to collective oversight, in this case we believe that ICANN staff has crossed the boundary between contracting and policy making. We also see a dangerous conflict between ICANN's putative oversight role and its incentive to negotiate generous financial agreements with a contractor that is at the same time ICANN's main source of revenue. Accordingly, our comments have three actionable items:
1. We would like to see the "no criticism of ICANN" provisions stricken from the settlement agreement.
2. We would like to see ICANN's GNSO initiate a policy development process on the issue of registry renewal expectancy, and produce and adopt a uniform policy that would apply equally to all registries.
3. We would like to see a policy development process on the issue of price caps for registries, and adoption of a uniform policy that would apply equally to all registries.

Unified Root & Users

2005-11-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

I read the recent CNET article, "Dutch tech firm wants to rid the Web of the .com" shortly after having a conversation with Joe Baptista. Naturally, I was curious to find out more by visiting the unified root website. It was there that I found the note:
"If the image on the left shows an error, your system is not resolving UnifiedRoot TLDs.
You can arrange to correct this in two ways:
Contact your ISP, and request it to resolve UnifiedRoot TLDs; or
Re-configure your own DNS settings in accordance with the information below (please attempt only if you have a full understanding of your PC settings!)."
This notice made it clear to me that the alternate root community is still not ready to properly deal with the general public. What percentage of the populace is savvy enough to re-configure their own DNS settings? I would advise Joe & friends to have a look at the plug-in work being done by James Seng and others -- users will need a plug-in of some type if they are ever to take advantage of the Unified Root's offering.

ALAC Violates GNU GPL

2005-11-27T08:35:00.000-05:00

Writing on the GA list, Sotiris Sotiropoulos states: "The new ALAC site is in violation of the GNU GPL terms of use for the Mambo CMS. On the Mambo CMS site it is explicitly stated that "You may NOT alter the license and you must NOT alter the copyright." The icannalac.org site is in clear violation of this condition, the ALAC 'webmaster' removed the copyright notice from the footer which ought to read: " Miro International Pty Ltd. © 2000 - 2005 All rights reserved. Mambo is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License." This is actually a fraud, just like the entire ALAC itself (i.e. trying to pass itself off as legitimate and distinct). So, we know that the ALAC is lacking technical proficiency and...scruples. What more needs be said? Shame!"

.SUCKS

2005-11-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

With the recent posting of an ICANN staff-produced GNSO Discussion Document on new TLDs, the GNSO Council is all but guaranteed to launch a formal Policy Development Process to kick-start a new round of talks on new TLDs that can be expected to drag on for several years -- of course, certain constituencies such as the Intellectual Property Constituency will invariably delay matters interminably by questioning whether we should even have any more new TLDs, but I digress -- what's important to me is to make sure that we capitalize on this opportunity to promote a .sucks domain. I can't think of any new TLD that would be more appropriate in the current climate. Imagine the value of registering bush.sucks or icann.sucks or verisign.sucks or any other such protest domain. The expansion of the namespace should definately demonstrate utility, and such a namespace would clearly be in the public interest. The big question is, can Civil Society or some other benefactor entity be convinced to pony up the cash to make such a choice a viable possibility...

GNSO Non-public Forum

2005-11-26T23:40:00.000-05:00

ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has scheduled a Public Forum to cover the broad range of topics currently before the GNSO Council. They have allocated a whole two hours for this event-- how magnanimous! -- (out of which perhaps 5 minutes will be set aside for public comments). Of course, they haven't published an email address to which comments may be sent, so for now, please send your comments to the GNSO Secretariat: Glen de Saint Géry gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org You might want to ask the Council why they haven't even discussed the policy implications of the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement, or why they haven't done anything about registrar data escrow, or why the Council has no public comment intake mechanism... and for fun, you might ask them which of their constituencies represents the Internet's individual users.

IPC Website Disappears

2005-11-26T23:27:00.000-05:00

ICANN's Intellectual Property Constituency website disappeared about 4 or 5 months ago, and of course, no one has noticed. Perhaps they failed to keep up with payments to Songbird Internet Services (owned and managed by ICANN staffer Kent Crispin), but as those IP lawyers usually do make a good buck, there is probably some other reason for their recent "transparency"... who knows, maybe they were the very first to install the SONY rootkit onto their computers :)

Raging at ICANN

2005-11-26T22:42:00.000-05:00

Another recent comment sent to ICANN: "Do you think we're idiots? What I find even more amazing is that you obviously thought that you might slip this by the internet public without notice. No caps on price increases AND perpetual control of the COM registry for Verisign? I have never seen a more blantant example of two organizations scratching each other's backs than this one. ICANN gets to increase (by a factor of three) it's budget and hence their fees while Verisign has carte blanche on their .COM business practices with no one to answer to about it except for their "buddy" ICANN. The proposed .COM renewal contract should be retooled to reflect the Internet community's concerns. YOU WORK FOR US. WE DO NOT WORK FOR YOU. gTLDs are a public trust and as such no registry operator, including VeriSign, should be given indefinite control over them, especially one as important as the .COM registry. Wasn't this the reason why the monopoly was taken away from Network Solutions? VeriSign's unilateral price increases that are not cost-based and not subject to approval should not be allowed. All ICANN fees should continue to be approved by the Internet community. Internet users should not have to pay an unreasonable "ICANN Tax" or pay more for domain names just to increase VeriSign's profits. REMEMBER YOUR FOUNDING CHARTER AND STOP TURNING INTO WHAT YOU WERE CREATED TO PROTECT US FROM."

More ICANN Lawsuits Planned

2005-11-26T22:33:00.000-05:00

Tucows has published a lengthy statement on the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement. An excerpt: "Of substantial concern to Tucows is the clear message that this proposal sends to the global community. By rewarding Verisign in this matter, the ICANN staff is clearly signaling that the United States legal system is now the preferred mechanism for effecting ICANN policy changes. The outcome will be two-fold; ICANN will have traded one lawsuit for many – there is no shortage of actions being prepared in anticipation of this settlement being implemented – and; the global community will be further alienated by the actions of ICANN’s staff."

No Comment Period, Again

2005-11-26T21:52:00.000-05:00

The ICANN Board convened on November 8th and passed the following resolution: "Resolved [05.__], the ICANN Board directs staff to post for public comment the ALAC-proposed ICANN ByLaws changes to Article XI, Section 2, paragraph 4(i). Following the public comment period the ICANN Board will consider the public comments and determine whether the relevant ICANN Bylaws provisions should be modified. " It has been over two weeks now, and the Staff still hasn't posted the requested Bylaws changes. Actually, the Staff hasn't posted a lot of things that were supposed to be posted... they didn't post the .jobs contract for public comment, they didn't post the .travel contract for public comment, and they didn't post the .net contract for public comment. Maybe we should be asking ICANN to post a "Help Wanted" sign -- I'm sure that a more competent staff could be found.

The Dysfunctional ALAC

2005-11-26T20:55:00.000-05:00

In discussing the At Large Advisory Committee position on the proposed VeriSign settlement, the ALAC's John Levine writes: "We need to figure out what the issues of most importance to the at large community are." I can sympathize with John. He's stuck on a committee that is supposed to be relaying bottom-up input from certified At-Large Structures to the Board. The problem is: none of these groups has ever supplied any input on any topic whatsoever either to the ALAC or to the ICANN Board. As such, the ALAC is forced to pontificate in the absence of any real public feedback. Interestingly enough, that hasn't stopped the ALAC from launching a new website captioned "Notes from the bottom up"... and yes, the website sucks... it still uses language written by ICANN staff who don't yet even realize that Esther Dyson hasn't been a member of the ALAC for almost a year now. So John, if you're listening, here's a suggestion: take over the Chairmanship of that group when Vittorio retires and start kicking some butt. If the ALAC is ever going to work you'll need to wake up your member organizations and get them involved, and if it can't be done, then do us a favor and call it a day. This fiasco has been dragging on for far too long already.

Replacing the ICANN Staff

2005-11-26T20:01:00.000-05:00

OK, we all know that the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement sucks. There are hundreds of comments posted in opposition, and within another week the ICANN Board in Vancouver will arrive at a formal determination. Yet within all those comments, not one person has hit upon the issue that bothers me the most -- just how is it possible that ICANN, a body charged with arriving at community consensus on DNS issues, has managed to retain a staff that has no clue whatsoever as to the generally-held views of the broader Internet community? How could Staff have negotiated a deal that was this bad? Adding fuel to the flame was their ridiculous follow-up Q&A which sought to defend price increases and the monumental windfall give-aways that were incorporated into this abomination. We are looking at a group of people that are so far out of touch with the community that one has to ask whether it's time for a wholesale replacement of personnel.

Utah to force ISPs to block porn websites

2005-03-23T21:46:00.000-05:00

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On C/Net: "Utah's governor signed a bill on Monday that would require Internet providers to block Web sites deemed pornographic and could also target e-mail providers and search engines."

While a very long thread on this topic appears on the NANOG list and on Slashdot, there is still no discussion of this issue in ICANN's ISP constituency. Perhaps someone in ICANN management can wake up the last three members of this constituency and have them join the discussions...

New Instance of K-root Server Deployed

2005-03-23T21:37:00.000-05:00

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The RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) in partnership with Etisalat (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation) deployed a new mirror instance of the K-root Internet root name server at Emirates Internet Exchange (EMIX) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The K-root server is one of the thirteen Internet root name servers that resolve lookups for domain names all over the world. It forms a critical part of the global Internet infrastructure.
Deployment of anycast instances of the K-root server further improves the distribution of this crucial service in various Internet regions and its resilience against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Ful details here.

What's not on the ICANN Mar del Plata Agenda

2005-03-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

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As one reviews the agendas posted by different groups such as the ISPCP Constituency, the NonCommercial Constituency, the Cross-Constituency (ISP-IP-Business), and the Registrars Constituency, it suddenly becomes very clear that no one gives a damn about the registrant agenda.

The above-listed groups plan to hold discussions on the following:

ISPs: ICANN strategic Plan, WHOIS, WSIS, Input for council discussion with GAC, New gTLD strategy, GNSO Policy development, Election for GNSO Board seat

NCUC: Election of 3rd Council member, replacement of Executive Committee member, ncuc.org website, chair election, consumer protections issues (deferred to Luxembourg session)

Cross-Constituency: WHOIS, Strategic Plan, New gTLDs Strategy, Status of existing process on sponsored gTLDs, WSIS

Registrars: EPP concerns, Technical and Business issues, Transfers policy issues

What is missing from the agenda of concern to registrants is the following: the tarnishment of the .pro domain, the failure of ICANN to enforce its own escrow policy (which puts millions of registrants at risk), privacy protection in WHOIS, the risk of domain hijackings owing to laxity in registrar dealings with domain name resellers, expired domain name aftermarket issues, IDNs as a spoofing and phishing tool, the lack of a user's bill of rights, the lack of representation for users in the GNSO and on the ICANN Board, excessive redemption grace period fees, the inability to select another registrar during the redemption grace period, the lack of new gTLDs, etc.

ICANN clearly needs a registrants constituency. These issues won't go away just because all the other constituencies choose to ignore them.

RegistryPro wakes up

2005-03-23T20:18:00.000-05:00

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From the RegistryPro forum:

RegistryPro Discussion
It has come to the attention of RegistryPro that some .pro name holders are licensing their domain names to parties who may not themselves qualify for a .pro domain name. This practice may have caused some temporary confusion in the marketplace.

RegistryPro, in accordance with its agreements with ICANN, registrars, and others, fully maintains that every .pro domain name sold is activated only after appropriate professional credential checks have been successfully completed. Furthermore, all .pro domain names are sold to credentialed professionals, namely attorneys, physicians, engineers, and accountants in the US, Canada, UK, and Germany.

Once a .pro domain is appropriately purchased, RegistryPro does not assume control over the use of that name. This includes the secondary market and licensing programs referenced above.

In efforts to foster discussion on this topic, RegistryPro has launched a public forum at http://www.registrypro.pro/forum to allow the public to openly voice their opinions.

It is our hope that all viewpoints are fairly and constructively discussed.

NCUC and Consumer Protection Issues

2005-03-23T19:36:00.000-05:00

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Writing on the NonCommercial Constituency discussion list, Milton Mueller raises an agenda item for the ICANN Mar del Plata session:

7. consumer protection issues -- Lots of utter bullshit going on in registrar contracts and registrar-registrant relations that need to be addressed from a consumer protection standpoint. We might consider making this a campaign longterm. Since this is my idea, and many of you may have no idea what I am talking about, this can wait until the European meeting, which I will attend.

ICT R&D Grants Programme for Asia Pacific

2005-03-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

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The ICT R&D Grants Programme is pleased to announce the March 2005 Competition round for ICT R&D grant applicants from the Asia Pacific region.

This open theme competition welcomes proposals in the following areas:

Research and development into innovative ICT applications, with a clear focus on practical and replicable approaches and techniques.
Research on Internet infrastructure design, performance, management policy and related topics.
Development of practical solutions based on the application of proven and readily available Internet technologies with minimum basic research.
Research on the outcomes and social impacts of specific ICT policies and interventions and application of Internet technologies.
Research on policy matters affecting Internet networking in the Asia Pacific region, especially where linked to areas such as policy impacts, gender equity, social equity, sustainable communities, and technology diffusion/transfer and benefits to rural areas.
Technology related issues such as broadband connectivity, “last mile innovation, mobile and wireless technologies for the developing world, and increasing the capacity or efficiency of existing network infrastructures.

We will NOT entertain proposals which fall outside the scope of the grants programme.

Interested organizations or institutions from the Asia Pacific region may apply for either of the following types of grants:

Grants up to a maximum budget of US$9,000 over a term not exceeding 12 months.
Grants up to a maximum budget of US$30,000 over a term not exceeding 24 months.

To learn more, please read about the Scope, Criteria, Grants awarded before completing an Application form with the full details of your proposal. Please note that proposals must satisfy all of the programme requirements in order to be considered for funding.

Kindly note that the deadline for applications for this round is 30 March 2005.

The grants committee will screen all proposals, and the results will be made known by mid May 2005.

Contact person for the ICT R&D Grants Programme at APDIP:

Phet Sayo
Programme Specialist Capacity Building
Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme
Tel: +603 2091-5172
Fax: +603 2093-9740
Email: phet@apdip.net

ICANN And Its Approval Of The .EU TLD

2005-03-23T12:33:00.000-05:00

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From Karl Auerbach's CaveBear Blog:

You would think that such a major event - the approval of a new TLD (.eu) and the recognition of a new political entity - would have been done in the light of day. But no, as is typical the news sort of oozed out - and oozed not out of ICANN which so far has no notice of the decision on its web site, but rather out of the .eu folks.

ICANN, "staff" probably suddenly slopped the question onto a plate, put it in front of the board as a last-minute surprise agenda item, and the board probably dutifully came to attention, saluted, and swallowed.

Was .eu deserved? Perhaps. Was the board debate, if it even occurred, visible to the public? No.

Now that many European countries, members of .eu, now have two ccTLDs to work under will other federations of states be given the same ability to have ccTLDs for both the member states and the umbrella entity?

For example, will the states of the United States or the provinces of Canada, states which do retain a great deal of self-sovereignty, be able to obtain their own ccTLDs?

Certainly it makes sense for California to obtain its own ccTLD - California being larger in space and economic power than many of the member states of the .eu. And California, being a blue state, is most clearly quite separate and apart from the rest of the federal entity called the United States.

Or alternatively will the nations that are members of .eu now relinquish their ccTLDs or sell them on e-Bay?

In any case, I welcome .eu to the community of 'e' TLDs - .edu, .ewe,. .ec, .ee, .eg. .eh, .er, .es, .et, and now .eu

Eurid Press Release

2005-03-23T12:21:00.000-05:00

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At a meeting on 21 March 2005, the board of ICANN approved the delegation of the new .eu top level domain and authorised their CEO, to enter into an agreement with EURid, the organisation selected by the European Commission to operate the .eu registry. The decision was taken following contractual negotiations between ICANN and EURid over the past few months and approval of the agreement by the European Commission. The board decision sets in motion the next stage whereby IANA (The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), after seeking approval from the US Department of Commerce puts .eu in the internet root. This is not expected to take more than 10 days.

“Having .eu in the root sets the green light for the launch of .eu” said EURid General Manager, Marc Van Wesemael “Over the next few months we will be working very hard on the final preparations with the aim of launching the .eu Sunrise period later this year”.

Next steps to the launch of .eu: EURid is currently working on the full .eu Registration Policy including the full rules and procedures for the so called ‘sunrise period’ which will allow public bodies and holders of prior rights such as trademarks to register in advance of others. The Registration Policy must be approved by the European Commission and be published for two months before starting registrations. Over the coming months the draft will be published on the EURid web site for the comment of interested parties.

Another top priority will be the accreditation of a network of .eu Registrars who will register .eu names on behalf of end-users. The Registrar agreement should be available during May 2005 and a list of those who have signed up will be published on the EURid web site. Anyone wanting a .eu name will need to choose one of those registrars in order to request or ‘pre-register’ their names.

Provided the .eu registration policy receives EC approval in time, the .eu sunrise period should be launched before the end of this year. The sunrise period will last for four months after which general registration will begin on a first-come-first-served basis. More information about EURid and .eu can be found on the EURid web site at: http://www.eurid.org.

[... and still ICANN has posted nothing on its website...]

ICANN gives green light for eu Domain

2005-03-22T23:12:00.000-05:00

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A translation of a heise on-line scoop (spotted on WebHostingTech):

Excerpt:

The eu Domain jumped a further hurdle on the way to becoming the European Top Level Domain. Tonight the directors of ICANN gave the green light to signing the contract with the Eurid consortium (assigned by the European Commission to manage the Registry enterprise). There will soon be a meeting for this purpose with ICANN president Paul Twomey, said Eurid's general manager Marc van Wesemael to heise on-line.

IANA Policy for Allocation of IPv4Blocks to RIRs

2005-03-22T22:51:00.000-05:00

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ICANN has requested comment on the global policy document submitted by the Address Supporting Organization's Address Council. Thus far, all preliminary public comments tendered have been negative.

It appears to me that what is missing in this process is the record of the policy development process within the ASO. We really should have the opportunity to review the public comments previously submitted by those in the address community. Where is the record of support and dissent? Where are the comments of each individual address registry?

I can well imagine that there are several members on the ICANN Board with a limited grasp of numbering policy... how are they to arrive at a decision on this particular global policy without the benefit of proper policy development documentation? ... or is a rubber-stamp approach the only option on the table?

WSIS Special Briefing in New York

2005-03-22T22:36:00.000-05:00

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As part of the regular weekly briefings by the UN Department of Public Information for NGOs, there will be a special briefing on the WSIS at the United Nations in New York on 31 March from 10:00 to 12:00.
Rik Panganiban from the Conference Of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (CONGO) will be one of the speakers, along with speakers from the UNDP and from the Tunisian delegation (that will host the next phase of the World Summit on the Information Society).

For more information (and for the NGO Briefing and Event Schedule for 2005), visit http://www.un.org/dpi/ngosection/cal05.pdf

Web Pages by Language

2005-03-22T21:36:00.000-05:00

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I found on Andy Carvin's blog a list of web pages by language. Having noticed the Catalan language in the list (an application was submitted to ICANN last year to create the .cat sTLD), I started to realize once again that because many languages cut across national and territorial boundaries, we may need to think in terms of language-based TLDs in the future (as a realistic alternative to the current territorial-based ccTLD options). I hope that ICANN decides to approve the .cat application if only as a proof-of-concept TLD.

Web Pages.... Language

214,250,996.. English
.18,335,739.. Japanese
.18,069,744.. German
.12,113,803.. Chinese
..9,262,663.. French
..7,573,064.. Spanish
..5,900,956.. Russian
..4,291,237.. Portuguese
..4,883,497.. Italian
..4,046,530.. Korean
..3,161,844.. Dutch
..2,929,241.. Sweden
..1,374,886.. Danish
..1,259,189.. Norwegian
..1,198,956.. Finnish
....991,075.. Czech
....848,672.. Polish
....498,625.. Hungarian
....443,301.. Catalan
....430,996.. Turkish
....287,980.. Greek
....198,030.. Hebrew
....173,265.. Estonian
....141,587.. Romanian
....136,788.. Icelandic
....134,454.. Slovenian
....127,565.. Arabic
.....82,829.. Lithuanian
.....60,959.. Latvian
.....51,336.. Bulgarian
.....36,321.. Basque

FTC Commissioner wants to meet with ICANN

2005-03-19T23:31:00.000-05:00

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FTC Commissioner Jonathan D. Leibowitz has written to ICANN requesting a meeting. He states:

"Simply put, domain name registrars have failed to ensure that the data they collect from registrants is accurate and ICANN has not exercised sufficient supervision over the registrars. At your earliest convenience, I would very much like to meet with you to discuss ways of improving the Whois system."

Special Meeting of the ICANN Board

2005-03-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

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As noted on the ICANN website:

21 March 2005
Special Meeting of the Board

Update on sTLD Applications and .NET successor registry process
Review of .TEL (Telnic) sTLD application
Delegation of .EU and EURid-ICANN Agreement
Directors' Expense Reimbursements
Designation of Academic Representative to the 2005 Nominating Committee
Other Business

as usual, don't plan on any ICANN Board minutes from this session being posted. After all, why should the ICANN Board have to comply with its own bylaws? ICANN knows that it remains accountable to no one.

Jottings.com debates Encirca.com

2005-03-19T22:22:00.000-05:00

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An interesting discussion at Jottings.com. Andrew Moulden in an article entitled "$49dollarswasted.pro" wrote:

"And today, with the announcement by EnCirca of $49 unrestricted second level .pro registrations (via DNJournal.com) we picked up teacher.pro - and almost immediately regretted it. The fine print revealed that some unusual procedures are required here to allow EnCirca to offer these registrations without breaching the underlying requirements of the .pro registry. Domains will have to be managed through EnCirca nameservers. To make use of the domains, registrants will have to use A and CNAME records rather than nameserver changes. EnCirca’s information will appear in the whois record in all contact fields except the admin contact.
So, in short, the same level of ownership isn’t on the agenda here."

Andrew actually received a very nice comment/reply from EnCirca president Tom Barrett who offered to cancel the registration and to provide a full refund... which prompted Andrew to ask the following questions:

1. What guarantees have registrants that the system of registering .pro domains effectively using EnCirca as a proxy registrant will not be forbidden (as for .us) at some point in the future?

2. If the system was designed to circumvent the need for registration of two 3LDs in different SLDs before registering an SLD, and then you actually permit the changing of whois and nameserver information, how does this remain within the terms of the TLD agreement with ICANN?

Mr. Barrett has chosen not to respond thus far.

.Mobi to be approved on Monday?

2005-03-19T21:58:00.000-05:00

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Found (of all places) on the Basketball blog:

"Online Retail Report has learned through a source familiar with the situation that the creation of the .mobi extension - which was introduced last March by a group led by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Nokia Corp. (NOK) and Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) - is likely to be ratified by the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, either Monday or at a meeting in April."

Privacy & ICANN (like oil & water)

2005-03-15T22:31:00.000-05:00

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Vittorio Bertola writes:

So, may I please ask who is going to deal with modifying the Whois requirements of the RAA so to make them compliant with international privacy standards, and when? I really need a convincing reply to this question.

The widespread feeling among user constituencies (but also among those privacy authorities that I know directly) is that ICANN is actively working to prevent privacy standards from being implemented in Whois. Rather than doing so (may I remember that we even got a written request by the Council of European Privacy Authorities two years ago?), we are releasing policy proposals like #2, that at a first glance seems written to provide ICANN with a way to escape the right of sovereign countries to regulate the domain name business as they like.

I must confess that seen from the outside - be it an NGO which has never been involved in ICANN before, or a senior governmental officer that is only interested in the political part of our mandate - this process looks like the proof that ICANN is unable to meet its mandate properly, and to produce sound policy that keeps into account the needs of all stakeholders and the global public interest. Putting forward recommendations that only address accuracy but not privacy would just provide more evidence of this.

Milton Mueller on Registrars & WHOIS

2005-03-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

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From the WHOIS Task Force list:

I note that the concern with keeping the playing field "level" for suppliers comes only from American registrars and it comes AT THE EXPENSE of the consumer. (You know, the folks who are not represented anywhere in GNSO.) You are, in effect, admitting that consumers would
prefer a registrar in which their privacy rights are respected, and you are trying to prevent the system from making that choice available because you fear the effect of the choices. Shame.

Second, this argument can be turned around on you. From the perspective of a European or Asian, ICANN's requirement that registrars violate local privacy law may make it impossible for business in those countries to be accredited as registrars and thus limit competition in this
market. In other words, it's perfectly possible to argue that YOU guys are the ones tilting the playing field, not our little attempt to carve out some room for compliance. Take a look at how the gTLD registrar market is divided up among the world regions right now. What story does
the market share tell? If market share did shift a bit in response to such a change, would it be "unfair" or "more fair?"

Third, there are many ways, aside from Whois data, in which a business's jurisdiction may handicap or benefit a competitor. Tax rates, for example, or other forms of national regulation regarding labor practices, technology, etc. Shall we have ICANN level all those conditions? OK, let's have the RAA dictate the tax rate a locality can charge registrars, and if it doesn't comply, let's refuse to accredit any registrars in that jurisdiction. Don't like that idea? Why not? What
makes whois data any different?

Finally, I would note (for those of you who haven't noticed) that ICANN's globalized model of contractual governance is under subtantial international pressure right now, from WSIS, etc. A short-sighted, "I'm going to oppose anything that might possibly affect my bottom line
adversely in the slightest way" approach to the problem may not be the appropriate response for registrars to take right now. In other words, if you make it all or nothing, you may end up with nothing.

Have a nice day....

Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies

Re: EnCirca’s "ProForwarding Service"

2005-03-15T21:59:00.000-05:00

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Dear Tom,

ICANN is concerned about EnCirca’s "ProForwarding Service" since it seems to violate the spirit of having "restricted" Top-Level-Domains such as .PRO. .PRO domains are intended to be restricted to "persons and entities that are credentialed by appropriate entities (such as through governmental bodies and professional organizations) to provide professional services" (.PRO Registry Agreement, Appendix L, ).

EnCirca’s ProForwarding Service seems designed to circumvent these restrictions by allowing anybody to obtain "the full benefits of domain registration" in .PRO without having any professional credentials.

In order to conduct a comprehensive review of this service, we would like to exercise our rights under section 3.4.3 of EnCirca’s Registrar Accreditation Agreement to review EnCirca’s registration records. Please prepare to make the following data available to ICANN for all .PRO domains registered by EnCirca:

1. The submission date and time, and the content, of all registration data (including updates) submitted in electronic form to the .PRO registry operator;

2. Copies of all written communications constituting registration applications, confirmations, modifications, or terminations and related correspondence with .PRO registrants, including registration contracts; and

3. Records of the accounts of all .PRO registrants, including dates and amounts of all payments and refunds.

Pursuant to RAA section 3.4.3, ICANN will treat these records as confidential and will not disclose the content of the records to any third parties.

Please provide these records in whatever form is most convenient for you, at your earliest opportunity. It would be most convenient for ICANN if EnCirca could provide copies of the records electronically, and prior to 11 April 2005. If that would not be feasible, we will arrange to visit EnCirca’s offices to inspect the records in person at any time convenient to you during the week of 11 April 2005.

Thank you for your attention. We look forward to your prompt cooperation with this request.

Sincerely,

Tim Cole

Chief Registrar Liaison

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/cole-to-barrett-14mar05.pdf

WGIG Input Papers: Round Two

2005-03-15T12:40:00.000-05:00

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William Drake writes:

I was going to briefly reply to Adam but decided it would be better to provide a more developed response to the broader community.

As you know, WGIG is now working on a second round of input papers. Unlike the first round, which addressed the vertical or nominally separable substantive issues (i.e. names and numbers, interconnection, security, etc), this round is focused on the horizontal or cross-cutting
institutional/procedural issues. That is, we are looking at the extent to which the current public and private sector governance mechanisms relevant to the vertical issues meet the WSIS DoP criteria:

"The international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations. It should ensure an equitable distribution of resources, facilitate access for all and ensure a stable and secure functioning of the Internet, taking into
account multilingualism."

I. To facilitate this evaluation, the vertical issues have been grouped into five clusters (well, four, the first of which has two parts). Drafting groups have been formed to assemble papers on each.

1. Issues relating to infrastructural issues and the management of critical Internet resources
(a) Physical and Secured Infrastructure Issues
· Telecommunications infrastructure, broadband access
· VoIP
· Peering and interconnection
· Spectrum policy
· Technical standards
Institutions: IEEE, IETF, ITU, W3C, Other private consortiums

(b) Logical Infrastructure Issues
· Administration of Internet names
· Administration of IP addresses
· Administration of root server system
· Administration of root zone files
· Multilingualization of Internet naming systems
Institutions: ICANN, IETF, ISO, ITU, RIRs, Root Server Operators, WIPO

2. Issues relating to the use of the Internet, including spam, network security, and cybercrime. While these issues are directly related to Internet Governance, the nature of global cooperation required is not well defined.
· Spam
· Cybersecurity, cybercrime
· Security of network and information systems
· Critical infrastructure protection
· Applicable jurisdiction, cross border coordination
· Exemption for ISPs of third party liabilities
· National policies & regulations
Institutions: APEC, Council of Europe, ITU, OECD

3. Issues which are relevant to the Internet, but with impact much wider than the Internet, where there are existing organisations responsible for these issues.
· Competition policy, liberalization, privatization, regulations
· Consumer, user protection, privacy
· Electronic authentication
· Unlawful content and practices
· Access protection
· Intellectual property rights
· Dispute resolution
· E-commerce and taxation of e-commerce
· E-Government and privacy
· Freedom of information and media
Institutions: APEC, CAHSI, Council of Europe, IETF, ITU, OECD, UN/CEFACT,
UNCITRAL, UNCTAD, UNESCO, WIPO, WTO, Private consortiums

4. Issues relating to developmental aspects of Internet governance, in particular capacity building in developing countries, gender issues and other access concerns.
· Affordable & universal access
· Education, human capacity building
· Internet leased line costs
· National infrastructure development
· Cultural and linguistic diversity
· Social dimensions and inclusion
· Open-source and free software
· Content accessibility
Institutions: ITU, UN ICTTF, UNESCO, World Bank

II. The drafting groups' papers will assess the extent to which the abovementioned institutions/governance arrangements meet three kinds of DoP-based criteria:

1. Process Criteria (To what extent to the institution’s Internet-related governance mechanisms meet the following criteria, given what could be reasonably expected in light of the governance mechanism used?)
· Multilateral
· Transparent
· Democratic
· Full participation

2. Role and responsibility criteria (To what extent do the institution’s Internet-related governance mechanisms enable the different stakeholder groups to fulfill their roles and responsibilities as defined by WSIS? To what extent to the different stakeholder groups have the capacity to fulfill their roles and responsibilities?)
· Governments
· Private Sector
· Civil society
· Intergovernmental organizations
· Other international organizations

3. Outcome Criteria (How effectively to the institution’s Internet-related governance mechanisms contribute to achievement of the following goals?)
· Equitable distribution of resources
· Access for all
· Stable and secure functioning
· Multilingualism

The papers are also to consider the meta-question of coordination, i.e. how effectively is governance of a given issue coordinated with governance of other Internet-related issues; and to end with an overall assessment on the points that most need improvement in order to meet the WSIS criteria.

The two steps described above are drawn from WGIG documents. I just spoke with Markus and he has agreed to post these to the web soon.

III. Timeline.

The papers on governance mechanisms per issue-cluster are supposed to be finished and circulated for comment within WGIG during the next week. They are to be posted to the website for open assessment/comment at the end of the month. At the third WGIG meeting, April 18-20, the internal and external inputs will be considered, and the group will begin to organize itself around the drafting of the actual report.

IV. CS Participation.

There are two main ways CS could contribute to this stage of the work.

1. Between now and the third WGIG meeting, individuals, organizations, and caucuses/WGs could just go ahead and do their own evaluations of governance mechanisms of particular concern to them, preferably using the framework laid out above. Markus says the secretariat can create a space on the website where these inputs could be loaded.

2. Between April 1 and the third WGIG, individuals, organizations, and caucuses/WGs will be able to submit responses to the horizontal input papers on the WGIG website, per previous.

Obviously, this is a key stage in the process. The horizontal issues are likely to figure prominently in the final report, and there is a need for a coherent, progressive CS voice on such matters as transparency, participation, etc. Good interventions on these matters would strengthen the hand of the CS contingent within WSIS when the time comes to negotiate
how they will be treated in the report. One would also think that the horizontal/institutional issues lend themselves toward a greater degree of agreement within CS than has been evident with respect to many of the vertical/substantive issues. That is part of why the IG caucus
interventions to date generally have focused more on the former than the latter.

Thematic Conference: Ubiquitous Network Society

2005-03-15T12:32:00.000-05:00

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The Japanese government will hold a WSIS thematic meeting on Ubiquitous Networks, 16-17 May, 2005, Tokyo, Japan.

Conference registration is now open. A limited number of fellowships for travel and accommodation are available. Please see http://www.wsis-japan.jp/

Conference organizers describe the conference theme as:

Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference WSIS thematic meeting "Toward the realization of the Ubiquitous Network Society" - anytime, anywhere, by anything and anyone -

The "ubiquitous network society", which will make it possible to connect anytime, anywhere, by anything and anyone, is now rapidly becoming more than just a concept. In a ubiquitous network society, everyone and everything can be connected, and new innovations that will completely change the current dimension of ICT are anticipated. In the ideal ubiquitous network society, smooth interaction, reflection of users' needs and points of view as well as the tapping of individual energy are set to be realized.

(for more on the ubiquitous network concept, see http://www.nri.co.jp/english/opinion/papers/2003/np200366.html)

GLOCOM is helping to arrange civil society participation in the conference. The conference will be in Japanese and English.

There will be 4 main sessions during the conference, one organized by a local Japan civil society committee. Draft outline of the themes for the civil society session are:

Outline of the Civil Society Session
Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference

1) Overall Theme: Designing a People-Centered, Inclusive, and Development-Oriented Ubiquitous Network Society

2) Topics for discussion:

a) Access for All
- How to ensure equitable ubiquitous access to all persons
- Consideration for senior citizens, persons with disabilities and socially marginalized groups
- Design for All: from responding to specific needs to designing a common overall system
- Ensuring access in disaster situations such as Tsunami, earthquake or other natural or social disaster and make use of ubiquitous network for disaster reduction
- Ensuring access for less developed parts of the world
- Establishing the safe and reliable geographic and online community

b) Human rights including privacy protection

- Ubiquitous Network Society to help enhance human rights
- How to protect human rights in the highly networked society
- How to ensure privacy of citizens against misuse of information in the ubiquitous network environment

c) Principles of Technology dependent society: Ethics, social responsibility and accountability of ICT experts

d) The roadmap for ideal ubiquitous society for the citizens

- Civil Society perspective on how to build the ideal ubiquitous society
- Education, Technology, Information Infrastructure and other elements of social design should be considered in such a roadmap

3) Speakers:

A total of five speakers will be selected. Each speaker will make 10-15 minute presentation and the discussion will be open to floor. The Civil Society preparation committee will work on finding and selecting the speakers both from overseas and Japan. Speakers for the civil society session will be announced shortly.

Call for Papers

2005-03-15T12:29:00.000-05:00

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The 3rd International Workshop for Technology, Economy, Social and Legal Aspects of Virtual Goods organized by the GI Working Group ECOM and in parallel with IFIP Working Group 6.11 Communication Systems in Electronic Commerce

June 2 - 4, 2005, Ilmenau, Germany

http://VirtualGoods.tu-ilmenau.de
---------------------------------

Full version: http://virtualgoods.tu-ilmenau.de/2005/cfp.html

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following aspects:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Digital rights management
* Peer-to-Peer systems
* Payment systems
* New business models
* Solution architectures
* Legal aspects
* Inter-cultural aspects
* Security and privacy
* Content protection
* Watermarking
* Cryptographic mechanisms

Important Dates:
----------------

March 1, 2005 Full papers submitted
April 5, 2005 Notification of acceptance
May 1, 2004 Web-ready papers due

Technical Committee:
--------------------
General chair: Ruediger Grimm: mailto:ruediger.grimm@tu-ilmenau.de
Program Chair: Juergen Nuetzel: mailto:juergen.nuetzel@tu-ilmenau.de
Local chair: Thomas Boehme: mailto:thomas.boehme@mathematik.tu-ilmenau.de

Please freely distribute this call for papers.

Third Meeting of WGIG

2005-03-15T12:26:00.000-05:00

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The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) will hold its third meeting in Geneva from 18 to 20 April 2005. Consultations open to all stakeholders will be held on 18 April. More details will be announced soon on www.wgig.org. The Meeting will discuss papers based on a list grouping the key issues in four clusters as they were identified in the preliminary Report presented to WSIS PrepCom-2. Papers on these issues will be posted by the end of this month. All stakeholders are invited to send their comments and contributions, which will be published on the WGIG website.

sometimes, icann sucks

2005-03-15T00:28:00.000-05:00

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From Vittorio's blog:

a few days ago, the italian ccTLD registry finally stopped publishing e-mails and telephone numbers in the whois queries. for the moment, the complete information is available on the web, by going through a graphic password verification. in the meantime, a complete policy is being discussed, so to allow individual registrants to keep at least some of their data out of any kind of public database, be it accessible through whois or through a web interface.

in our discussion in the italian policy board, we had no doubt that individuals have to fully identify themselves to the registry to get a domain name, so that they can be held responsible by public authorities for what they do with their domain. we also had no doubt that privacy laws must be applied, and that individuals have to provide a consent, and optionally deny some data from publication.

the only part on which we haven't made up our mind yet is whether individuals should have the option to completely hide their information, including their name, or whether they should be required at least to disclose the name and one form of contact (postal or e-mail address). personally, i would accept the idea of making the entire set of information reserved, just as you do with telephone numbers.

in the end, it took eight years and a lot of personal efforts to get privacy laws implemented in italy (i think we're the last ones in europe), but that's nothing if compared to how hard it is to get privacy respected in icann.

i must confess that i am totally disappointed by the discussion in the new (fourth or fifth rearrangement, i think) joint whois task force, where many participants - especially u.s. registrars and business/intellectual property users - are now pushing the discussion on how to find a way for icann to either ignore national privacy laws or refuse to accredit registrars from countries where the current whois requirements are illegal (more or less, any country except the united states).

one of our most famous statesmen used to say that "by thinking bad you commit a sin, but usually you get it right". so, to think bad, one could look at the facts and discover that, notwithstanding all the fuss about the advisory committees, policy is determined in a context (the gnso) where businesses (developed countries businesses, to be precise) have 5/6 of the power, civil society 1/6, and governments zero.

this is perhaps why icann since its inception keeps "working" on the whois issue, just to have an argument to keep all those noisy privacy authorities and foreign parliaments at bay, but never gets to anything.

the last argument i've heard on the list is that, since the u.s. have no privacy law, registrars from outside of the u.s. should not be allowed to "unfairly compete" with the american ones by offering privacy to their customers; and to ensure this, as said above, international registrars should either commit to break their country's laws, or be refused accreditation.

okay, icann is never going to actually approve anything like that - in fact, the staff has actually tried to bring the discussion back to reason, though in a rather unfortunate way, that has enraged most of the participants.

however, the more i look at whois, the more i get worried. it is clear that icann really needs significant structural reforms, to ensure that it really operates in the global public interest. i don't like the idea of letting the internet "fall into the hands" of bureaucracies, but what if you discover that it has already fallen into the hands of a tiny corporate group?

AfriNIC Application for RIR Recognition

2005-03-15T00:11:00.000-05:00

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In August 2004, the African Internet Numbers Registry (AfriNIC) submitted an Application for Recognition as the official Regional Internet number Registry (RIR) for the Africa region. In September 2004, the ICANN Board awarded provisional recognition to AfriNIC, with the expectation that they would fulfil their planned transition from the RIRs previously serving that region during early 2005.

AfriNIC and the Numbers Resource Organisation (NRO) recently announced that the three RIRs previously serving the AfriNIC region (APNIC, ARIN, and the RIPE NCC) transferred all RIR services to AfriNIC on 21 February 2005. With this step, AfriNIC has been operating as a fully functional RIR.

AfriNIC has now submitted to the ICANN Board an updated Application for Recognition, which includes summaries of their prior submissions, and details of their fulfilment of the ICP-2 Criteria for recognition. We are opening a 21 day public comment period on AfriNIC's Application for Recognition as the RIR for the Africa region.

ICANN Staff will prepare a report on this comment forum for the ICANN Board to use in their considerations of AfriNIC's Application at the upcoming Mar del Plata, Argentina meeting.

A Public Comment Forum has been opened regarding the updated AfriNIC Application for Recognition as a Regional Internet Registry. Comments should be sent to afrinic-recognition@icann.org

Domain Roundtable Conference

2005-03-15T00:02:00.000-05:00

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The Domain Roundtable Conference will be held in Seattle Washington on May 25th - 27th. Topics on the agenda include an ICANN update, Understanding Domain Hijacking, Search Engine Perspective on the Industry, Sunrise Policies in TLD Launches, Registration and Renewal Market Trends, the Domain Aftermarket, and more. Early Registration is open now --the cost is $620 per participant, but The Domain Roundtable event will be donating the net proceeds to Tsunami Relief through AmeriCares.org.

Panix.com Hijacking Update

2005-03-14T23:31:00.000-05:00

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Posted in the ICANN Correspondence pages:

Dear Bruce:

We have completed our review of the unauthorized transfer of panix.com. ICANN considers this to have been one of the more serious breaches of its policies by an accredited registrar. We are also very concerned by Melbourne IT's explanation that the incident happened because Melbourne IT had purportedly “delegated” to a reseller the critical responsibility for obtaining the consent of the registrant prior to submitting a transfer request to the registry. While we appreciate Melbourne IT's report that it has withdrawn the offending reseller’s ability to independently initiate transfers, Melbourne IT has indicated that it intends to continue to operate under agreements with other resellers that provide that Melbourne IT will not directly and independently verify the intent of registrants prior to initiating transfer requests. While we review the appropriateness of these arrangements under current policies and agreements, we will ask the SSAC to review this reseller/delegation issue in the context of the investigation it has launched into the security and stability concerns raised by the hijacking.

Also, while there is no indication that recent changes to the Transfer Policy had any bearing on this incident (the same abuse could have occurred under either the old or new policy), this issue will be referred to the upcoming GNSO review of the transfer policy for the consideration of changes that could be implemented to reduce the risks made apparent by this incident.

Based on documentation provided by Melbourne IT, Ltd. and Dotster, Inc., the incident occurred as a result of a failure of Melbourne IT to obtain express authorization from the registrant in accordance with ICANN's Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy. The Transfer Policy is an ICANN Consensus Policy that went into effect on 12 November 2004. Both of the registrars were forthcoming with information about what took place concerning this transfer and the timeline below further details the events that took place. Correspondence detailing ICANN’s questions and the registrars’ responses can be found in the Correspondence section of the ICANN website including:

Email from Tim Cole to Bruce Tonkin 18 January 2005

Email from Tim Cole to Clint Page 18 January 2005

Email from Bruce Tonkin to Tim Cole 27 January 2005

Email from Ravi Puri to Tim Cole 27 January 2005

Timeline

08 January 2005 (05:01 UTC) -Melbourne IT submitted a request to the registry to transfer the domain name. (Melbourne IT admits that this request was submitted without proper authorization. Since was not on “lock” status, the registry accepted the transfer request and initiated the transfer process within the registry system. Had the domain name been on registry or registrar lock status, the attempt by Melbourne IT to initiate a transfer would have been automatically rejected by the registry software.)

09 January 2005 (01:40 UTC) - Dotster received notification from the registry of the transfer request. (The registry notifies losing registrars of pending transfer requests in two ways: via email and registrar-specific reports available for download. Following the transmission of the transfer request to the losing registrar, there is a standard five day Transfer Pending Period. During the Transfer Pending Period losing registrars may take steps to verify the registrant's intent to transfer, including attempting to contact the registrant. The Policy also permits the losing registrar to request a copy of the authorization for the transfer from the gaining registrar. In this case, Dotster has indicated that it did not take any action in response to the notification of the transfer request and allowed the transfer to be approved automatically at the end of the five day Transfer Pending Period.)

14 January 2005 (14:03 UTC) - Transfer completed to Melbourne IT.

15 January 2005 (05:56 UTC) - Domain re-delegated by Melbourne IT's customer to new nameservers. (At this point it became evident to the legitimate registrant that the domain name had been hijacked. This was around 01:00 Saturday morning in the location of the registrant. The registrant spent several hours attempting to reach someone at each of the registrars and the registry who could take action to reverse the transfer.)

16 January 2005 (18:55 UTC) - ICANN sent emails to both registrars requesting an explanation and an immediate fix as appropriate. (ICANN’s inquiry to the registrars was prompted by a message to the public Registrars Constituency mailing list about the apparent hijacking.)

16 January 2005 (22:30 UTC) - Nameservers changed back by Melbourne IT Customer Service.

17 January 2005 (03:30 UTC) - Melbourne IT asked Dotster to initiate a transfer request in order to “undo” the transfer. (Registrars are encouraged to cooperate in this way to resolve disputes over transfers. The new Transfer Policy includes a formal dispute resolution process and a transfer undo mechanism, but it was not necessary to invoke either of those in this case.)

17 January 2005 (07:00 UTC) - Melbourne IT manually approved transfer requested by Dotster.

If you believe that further information would be helpful or corrections to the details above are warranted, please forward them to us and to SSAC for consideration in the review of this matter.

Sincerely,

Tim Cole
Chief Registrar Liaison
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

cc: Kurt Pritz
John Jeffrey

Domain Name Issues in Review

2005-03-14T22:50:00.000-05:00

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It's been about ten days since my last post, so I thought that I would see what's been happening in the ICANN world pertaining to domain name issues.

The At-Large Advisory Committee hasn't been discussing anything at all pertaining to domain names issues for the last month (pretty much par for the course).
The GNSO Council has been discussing "lunch" (pretty sad).
The Non-Commercial Constituency doesn't remember what domain name issues are; their only interest seems to be in advancing the cause of Civil Society
The ISP Constituency doesn't appear to be discussing any domain name issue, although they would like to meet sometime with ICANN staff to discuss the three-year Strategic Plan.
The Business Constituency's website has absolutely no new news regarding any domain name issues.
The Registry Constituency still hasn't relaunched their website, so we have no idea what they're privately discussing -- if we're lucky they're discussing how to comply with transparency requirements :)

Meanwhile, on the General Assembly discussion list there have been discussions on escrow, registry fee structures, the future of the At-Large, ICANN transparency (or lack thereof), the risk to registrants posed by registrar/reseller insolvency, shell accreditations, expiring domain issues, registrant rights, and revisions to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

Too bad that the General Assembly was structurally eliminated during the ICANN "Reform". It appears to be the only group (other than some registrars) that actually gives a damn about registrants and is willing to talk in earnest about domain name issues. Even ICANN Chairman of the Board Vint Cerf participates on the GA list.

Internet Governance Training & Fellowships

2005-03-04T22:18:00.000-05:00

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Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme - Call for Applications

Diplo, in cooperation with the Secretariat of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), is currently accepting applications for the Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme. This programme aims at improving Internet Governance related knowledge and skills for participants from developing countries.

The programme, which will last from March 14 to June 30, 2005, consists of an online course, individual and collaborative online research, and capacity building fellowships. Fellowships, which will be awarded to the most successful participants in the programme, will include one month placements at the Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) in
Geneva and participation at WGIG and other Internet Governance related meeting. The programme will facilitate community building among participants from different national, cultural and professional backgrounds.

The application deadline for this programme is March 10, 2005. For further information and to apply online, please visit the Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme website http://www.diplomacy.edu/ig/

ISOC Creates Digital Divide

2005-03-04T19:55:00.000-05:00

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ISOC has announced a $75 annual membership fee which will mean that the bulk of the developing world will no longer be able to have rights as voting chapter members.

As one chapter representative from Equador stated: "Impossible to pay USD 75... this is only another way to say digital exclusion and Internet only for those who can pay and live in countries that can afford such expenses."

Stay tuned for continuing developments. For now you may vent your fury by contacting:

David McAuley
Membership Director
Internet Society
703-326-9880, ext 104
703-963-5887 (mobile)
mcauley@isoc.org

ICANN Closes Public Comment Forum

2005-03-03T20:49:00.000-05:00

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It is no longer possible to go to the ICANN website and to click on the link to the ICANN Public Comment Forum in order to post a comment. The entire collection of forums is read-only. You might as well put up a sign that says "Public Keep Out!"

ICANN's MOU with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce requires ICANN to "Continue to develop, to test, and to implement appropriate mechanisms that foster informed participation in ICANN by the global Internet community".

Great job of fostering informed participation! Kudos to ICANN for one of the stupidest decisions they have ever made. It must be hard to reach this heightened degree of lunacy, but ICANN staff is clearly working very hard to be recognized as the consumate i-village idiot.

WHOIS Task Force Teleconference Transcript

2005-03-03T20:12:00.000-05:00

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The teleconference transcript for the 1 March 2005 meeting of the "combined" WHOIS taskforce has been posted. Excellent presentations were made by Denic, Cira, dot-ca, the Global Name Registry, and by three registrars who provide privacy services, Networksolutions, E-nom and GoDaddy.

Note: It has been reported that next week the Task Force hopes to see the first outline of a staff report (actually, the first half of a staff report). The Task Force chair will try to inquire with ICANN staff as to where that outline is and will let everyone know on the TF list.

A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies

2005-03-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

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ACM has published a document by Alex Simonelis that offers a succinct guide to the Internet entities: ISOC, IETF, IESG, IRTF, IRSG, IAB, RFC Editor, ICANN, IANA, and W3C. We won't criticize Alex for forgetting about the ITU. We're told that the next publication will be called "Living Without Acronyms" :)

ICANN Breaks New Record!

2005-03-03T15:39:00.000-05:00

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In a press conference today, ICANN officials announced that they have successfully managed to go twenty one (21) consecutive months without ever once posting the ICANN Board Minutes. The last minutes to be posted were for the Special Meeting of the Board on 2 June 2003.

ICANN Bylaws:

ARTICLE III: TRANSPARENCY Section 5. MINUTES AND PRELIMINARY REPORTS
1. All minutes of meetings of the Board and Supporting Organizations (and any councils thereof) shall be approved promptly by the originating body and provided to the ICANN Secretary for posting on the Website.

Upon being asked when the ICANN Board intends to finally honor its own bylaws, an ICANN Board member was heard to grumble, "...we're working on it." Well, keep up the good work folks... you're obviously an institution whose word we can trust.

IPC: Re-defining Transparent

2005-03-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

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From the Intellectual Property Constituency Charter: Elections of the IPC shall be fair, open and transparent.

From the GNSO Council list:

This message shall serve to officially notify that the IPC has recently held elections for 2 of its GNSO representatives. After receiving the required number of votes pursuant to the IPC bylaws, the IPC hereby certifies that the following persons have been elected: Lucy Nichols as IPC Representative to the GNSO; Kiyoshi Tsuru as IPC Representative to the GNSO.

Thank you for your patience in this matter. Kind regards. THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CONSTITUENCY

The last transparent message on the IPC discussion list is dated 28 April 2004. As we have not seen in this election who was nominated by whom, or how many votes each candidate received, or whether due process was followed, it is certainly hard to argue that the election was transparent -- unless, of course, the IPC has re-defined a transparent election process to mean an invisible election process.

ALAI on Internet Governance

2005-03-03T12:15:00.000-05:00

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ALAI, América Latina en Movimiento, has released an overview of the WSIS Prepcom2 (including commentary on Internet governance):

Governments have very differing positions on the issue of Internet governance, and it is not at all clear what level of consensus, if any, could emerge from the Summit. However, there is almost unanimous disagreement (the US excepted) with the status quo, in which most countries have no say in how the Internet is managed, and where a company registered under US law (ICANN), manages the administration of Internet (IP) names and numbers. Under the present system, organizations from certain countries can effectively be denied web domain names, as a result of US foreign policy or under the dictates of its antiterrorist legislation. In fact unilateral control of the system in theory gives the US the power to cut off a whole country from Internet access. However unlikely this may be in practice, many consider unacceptable a system that makes it possible.

New ICANN Staff Appointments

2005-03-03T01:01:00.000-05:00

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Olof Nordling – Manager of Policy Development Coordination
Maria Farrell – GNSO Policy Officer
Donna Austin – ccNSO Policy Officer
Barbara Roseman – IANA Operations Manager

details are here.

By the way, Maria is a renowned blogger -- see her contributions at Crooked Timber. This is a nice example of her thinking.

Communiqué of the 25th CENTR General Assembly

2005-03-02T23:54:00.000-05:00

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Over 60 participants representing registries for 30 TLDs participated in CENTR's 25th General Assembly and 2005 Annual General Meeting in Brussels, Belgium on the 22nd and 23rd of February, 2005.

The meeting unanimously reappointed Paul Kane (.ac) in his position of CENTR chairman and also welcomed Emily Taylor (.uk) and Hilde Thunem (.no) to join the CENTR Board of Directors, (the Executive Committee). The two departing board members Bart Boswinkel (.nl) and Alf Hansen (.no) were warmly thanked for their long service.

A statement was issued by the group as a reaction to a number of moves to block IDNs in software. It encourages software developers to carefully consider the issues, and work not to set back efforts to internationalise the Internet. The statement is available at: http://www.centr.org/docs/2005/02/homographs.html

The meeting conducted an exploration of the theme "New Registry Services and the future of the DNS", which a number of expert speakers covering a range of areas such as ENUM and RFID. Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the DNS, participated at the meeting and gave his view on the future of the DNS and what role it can play in new technologies. He encouraged development and experimentation in the DNS, and believed that the DNS presents a powerful way to deploy a variety of new applications. Speakers from VeriSign, NeuStar and EPC Global updated the meeting on new matters on developments for the DNS and the European Commission gave an overview of privacy concerns on RFID.

The meeting discussed PGP, with expert opinion given by Nominet which has successfully run a PGP secured registry for 9 years. Its implication on IANA would not only improve responsibility and accountability, but reduce IANA's liability for performing requests. It was agreed a small working group would be created within CENTR to develop policies and liaise with IANA.

The remainder of the communique can be read here.

A Secret E-Mail Address

2005-03-02T19:47:00.000-05:00

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My thanks to Marc Schneiders for this outstanding recommendation posted to the Combined WHOIS Task Force discussion list; he writes:

I was pretty sympathetic to the proposal (if I understood it right) of Tim, vid. that only the registrar would have the authoritative email address of the registrant, which would NOT be displayed in whois.

As we all know all email addresses displayed in whois are spammed to death.

As a result email to this address will in due course be impossible to read or monitor. Consequently the poor registrant will not see the reminder to renew. Nor the message that her domain will be transferred to a hijacker through another registrar.

IN SHORT: I strongly urge us all to create a method, where the authoritative email for transfers and the like is NOT in whois. Not for .com nor for the thick registries. This is essential in this age of spam.

I have some domains and I am forced to accept some 300 spam messages a day and to go through them each day. One of these may be a reminder to renew...This can so easily be changed: A 'secret' email address for communication between registrar and registrant. As an option this should be introduced soon.

ICANN Staff Issues Report is Now 1 Month Overdue

2005-03-02T19:34:00.000-05:00

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On 13 January the GNSO Council started a Policy Development Process (PDP) by formally requesting a Staff Issues Report. The ICANN bylaws require completion of such a report by ICANN staff within 15 days. It is now one month past the due date, and still no report. Staff performance is pathetic -- it's time for Twomey to kick some Staff butt.

The formal Council request: "Whereas the high demand amongst registrars to register specific domain names that become available for re-registration at the registry has lead to unforeseen impact and strains on the registration infrastructure of gTLD registries and registrars. Whereas this affects the service level that registrars can provide to their customers and the meaning of ICANN accredited as it applies to registrars, Council resolves, to request the ICANN staff manager to write an issues report (as specified in annex A to the ICANN by-laws) on the "Problems caused by contention for domain names made available by a gTLD registry ", so that Council can subsequently decide if a policy development process would be appropriate."

The Bylaws: Creation of the Issue Report --

"Within fifteen (15) calendar days after receiving either (i) an instruction from the Board; (ii) a properly supported motion from a Council member; or (iii) a properly supported motion from an Advisory Committee, the Staff Manager will create a report (an "Issue Report")."

ICANN TaskForce vs. the ICANN Staff

2005-03-02T19:18:00.000-05:00

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What happens when an ICANN Task Force requests legal guidance from ICANN staff? If you guessed "The Staff ignores the request just like they ignore the At-Large" then you would be 100% correct. The WHOIS 1/2 Task Force has been waiting for months for an "appointment" with the ICANN legal beagles to discuss conflicts between applicable law and the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. They finally decided that they weren't going to put up with the bullshit any longer and forwarded an appeal to the ICANN Ombudsman.

Task Force Co-Chair Jordyn Buchanan writes: "I actually just had a conversation with the Ombudsman earlier this evening--I hadn't originally realized that there was a special form to fill out, but I've done that now and have already received some follow up questions. It seems that the Ombudsman will be quite responsive to the complaint that we have filed."

New LACNIC IPv4 Initial Allocation Policy for ISPs

2005-03-01T23:17:00.000-05:00

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The LACNIC Board at the February 2005 meeting has ratified the implementation of a new policy for the initial allocation of IPv4 address blocks to ISPs in the LACNIC region.

As part of the LACNIC Policy Development Process, The Open Policy Forum held during LACNIC VII in San Jose Costa Rica approved a new policy which reduces the size of the initial minimum allocation of IPv4 address blocks for ISPs from a /20 to /21 (8 /24). The reduction of the size of initial minimum allocation comes together with a reduction in the requirements for accessing those blocks.

The /21 initial allocation is an alternative policy to the current /20 policy. This is that ISP may choose, according to their needs, apply for a /20 block or for a /21. In order to receive a /21 allocation the aplicant must:

Demonstrate the use or the immediate need of a /23
Send a detailed plan of the use of a /22 in one year
Renumber the previous allocated space and give back this space to their upstream provider in less than 12 months from the moment of LACNIC initial allocation

It is important to point that this new policy is exclusively for ISPs without any consideration of their multihomed or singlehomed status.

This policy will be applied in the LACNIC region starting March 1st 2005.

Any question regarding the implementation of this new policy may be sent to hostmaster@lacnic.net

AfriNIC Transition Moves to Phase 2

2005-03-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

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Announcement: With NRO support, and in anticipation of ICANN´s final recognition of the African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) as a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) in April 2005, AfriNIC has begun operating as a fully functional RIR. The three RIRs previously serving the AfriNIC region (APNIC, ARIN, and the RIPE NCC) transferred all RIR services to AfriNIC on 21 February 2005.

Currently all IP and AS number requests from the AfriNIC region are being submitted directly to AfriNIC. They will continue to be jointly reviewed by the RIRs, using a “second opinion” process. This coordination between the AfriNIC and RIR registration staff ensures consistency in the review process.

With the transition, database registrations with postal addresses inside the emerging AfriNIC region are now being documented in the AfriNIC WHOIS database.

The list of countries that make up the emerging AfriNIC region can be found at: http://www.afrinic.net/countries.htm

AfriNIC request forms can be found at:
http://www.afrinic.net/documentation.htm#templates

All policy documents are available on AfriNICs website at:
http://www.afrinic.net/documents.htm#policies

Information about the NRO and its support of AfriNIC is available at:
http://www.nro.net/archive/index.html

ALAC Embraces "Opening our Meetings"

2005-03-01T21:53:00.000-05:00

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ICANN's Interim (just how long is interim?) At-Large Advisory Committee appears poised to embrace the concept of transparency. Committee members "in a flurry of activity" (to quote the phrase used by Sotiris in his new blog) have begun in earnest discussing how one conducts an open meeting (after all, this is new territory for them). The discussion thread begins here.

Involving the Broader Community

2005-03-01T19:22:00.000-05:00

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This statement was provided by the gTLDs constituency in their comments on the ICANN Strategic Plan:

"We support the notion of providing additional resources to the GNSO so that it can adequately do its work, but we believe that support should be directed to the GNSO community as a whole rather than just the Council. The Council’s role is not to make policy but to facilitate policy development, and true bottom-up work has to start from the bottom. The Council should think of itself not as a legislature that makes policy but rather as a manager of policy development by the broader community. We believe ICANN resources would be well spent when directed to promote the inclusion and participation of all stakeholders in the process. "

ICANN Strategic Plan Comments

2005-03-01T18:09:00.000-05:00

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A last minute flood of comments on ICANN's Strategic Plan as the comment deadline elapses...

Comments from: APTLD, JPRS, CENTR, IPC, Sebastian Bellagamba, gTLD Registry Constituency, NRO, International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys FICPI, ccNSO, Marilyn Cade, and Vittorio Bertola.

Note: For those who are interested, I also submitted a 21-page document as part of the GNSO Amsterdam session. The Strategic Plan is important because it should be painting a picture of what the At-Large can expect in a post MOU ICANN (although version 1 doeesn't really do that).

A point that I raised in my own critique regarding ICANN's mission and the operator of the "L" root server is echoed below in comments submitted by the NRO:

"There are a number of references (p.22) to ICANN operating the "L" root name server. It is difficult to see how the operation of a root name server contributes to the ICANN mission. In fact, an argument could be made that operating a root name server puts ICANN into a conflict of interest situation as being responsible for the security and stability of the root server system and at the same time being a root server operator. It also prompts the question: would ICANN's concerns as a root server operator trump its overall management of the root server system?A good example of the potential points of conflict that would arise from ICANN's role as the operator of the "L" root server can be seen in the subsection entitled "Standardised relationships with Root server operators" (p. 27). Finally, the legitimacy of ICANN operating the "L" root server needs to be questioned. Without providing any further detail, the plan simply states that:"The community has entrusted ICANN with the responsibility of operating the "L" root name server." (p.23)"

Reading through these documents one notes many complaints by many parties; the most consistent objection, however, has been to the claim that ICANN "consulted" with the various communities. Each group is basically saying: You lied to the U.S. Department of Commerce when you submitted this report because the Strategic Plan claims that multi-stakeholder consultations were held, but you sure as hell didn't consult with us!

Here's an interesting tidbit from the gTLD Registries submission:

"The majority of gTLD registries are concerned that different registries (such as ccTLDs or .edu) are subject to very different contractual relationships with ICANN. In order to ensure Internet security and stability globally, ICANN should bring these groups into parity and move forward with the minimum necessary degree of contractual control exercised by ICANN over all registries."

I guess the gTLDs didn't have the resolve to also point to .gov and .mil as examples of registries still not under contract with ICANN.

There are so many excellent well-considered commentaries that I advise you to take the time to read them all. Get to know what others in the community are thinking. After all, ICANN is supposed to be a deliberative body within which informed participants can contribute to consensus-based policy-making.

Kleinwachter on revising ICANN bylaws

2005-03-01T12:08:00.000-05:00

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An exchange between Wolfgang Kleinwachter and ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee Chair Vittorio Bertola begins with this thread:

Bertola: And please... do not forget those of us who participate in the WSIS as individuals. We already had to ask a favour to friends from accredited NGOs just to be physically allowed in... I'm not sure about how many others act as individuals, but, in the Internet world, people tend to aggregate informally and to form flexible online groups, rather than to incorporate NGOs.

Kleinwachter: it would be great if you could take this message back to the ALAC and to go forward with a proposal for a revision of the ALAC related articles of the ICANN bylaws. You are the ALAC chair.

Bertola: I'm not sure why we are having this discussion right on the WSIS Plenary, Bureau and Content & Themes :-) (Though perhaps the IG Caucus could give a thought in participating in the joint ALAC-NCUC thinking exercises that we are trying to set up about the future of civil society structures at ICANN.) Anyway, you could for example have a look at the (draft, preliminary etc) comment to the Strategic Plan that we just sent to ICANN:http://forum.icann.org/mail-archive/alac/msg00934.html

Kleinwachter: Thanks Vittorio for this new statement. I share the spirit of the statement and you should distribute this widely, not only to the (under-visited) ALAC discussion forum. With regard to ALAC/NCUC cooperation this is fine and can help to create some synergies but does not repair the generic defect. While I support the spirit of Part 3 of the ALAC statement to the Strategic Plan, I encourage you as the ALAC Chair to go beyond some vague and defensive observations and questions and put forward some clear language for revised ICANN bylaws.

Presentations on the IRIS Protocol

2005-03-01T00:21:00.000-05:00

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Grumpy (the GrumpOps blog) writes:

While we yanks were kicking back on Monday, drinking beer on our day off all-the-while attempting to recite the names of all 40 or so POTUSes, the Europeans were hard at work making the Internet a better place and advancing the state-of-the-art. I'm referring to CENTR's 13th Technical Workshop where Nominet and DENIC gave presentations on IRIS (sometimes referred to by the working group that created it, CRISP). Their presentations are here and here.

Statements Made at Plenary WSIS Prepcom2

2005-02-28T22:22:00.000-05:00

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Marrakesh Declaration and Plan of Action

- Government of Brazil
- Government of Saudi Arabia
- Government of Malaysia
- Government of Barbados
- Government of Australia
- Government of Ghana
- Government of Bulgaria
- Government of Morocco
- Government of Algeria

- WSIS Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus
- WSIS Civil Society Human Rights Caucus
- WSIS Civil Society Privacy and Security Group
- Internet Society
- International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
- UNESCO
- UNDP Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP)

and still no contribution from ICANN management...

At-Large Warrior: Y.J.Park

2005-02-28T21:06:00.000-05:00

From rik:

There was a protracted debate, that is still continuing online, surrounding Ms. YJ Park's position that the civil society internet governance caucus has purposely rejected her positions on ICANN and its dominance by the US government. YJ felt so strongly about her position that she held up for 30-40 minutes a Content and Themes meeting that was to receive the statement of the internet governance caucus before it was delivered to governments the next morning. Instead it became a very personal debate between YJ and others in the Content and Themes meeting who wished to move forward and accept the IG caucus text as coming from the entire body of Content and Themes. This incident, which is still being played out, reveals a couple of things to me. Firstly, the role of the individual in the process is very important. As much as we carry the mandates of our various organizations, its the idiosyncratic personalities and characters of individuals that drive the process, for better or for worse. That is to say, one passionate person can make things happen in the WSIS that would have not been possible without that person.

Deadline for Internet Governance Survey Extended

2005-02-28T20:54:00.000-05:00

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One more week to join over 850 respondents from the Asia/Pacific region and register your views on Internet governance issues:

"Due to continuing very high demand we are extending the deadline for the UNDP-APDIP Survey on Internet Governance Priorities for the Asia-Pacific for two weeks until March 7, 6:00 pm , Malaysian Time. Tell your colleagues and take the survey here".

Internationalization of Cyberspace

2005-02-28T20:37:00.000-05:00

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The ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee's Ericke Iriarte has co-authored a paper advancing the concept of a legal regime for cyberspace modeled on the law of the High Sea.

Excerpt: In a Solomonian way, the trick consists in saying if the Internet ought not to belong to some countries, and if some countries do not want that it belongs to all countries, well then it should belong to no country at all! Legally speaking, the idea is to internationalize Cyberspace as the International Community had done it before for the High Sea.

Prepcom Report on Internet Governance

2005-02-28T20:30:00.000-05:00

Sally Burch writes:

There is almost unanimous disagreement with the status quo, in which most countries have no say in how the Internet is managed, and where a company registered under US law (ICANN), manages the administration of Internet (IP) names and numbers. Under the present system, organizations from certain countries can effectively be denied web domain names, as a result of US foreign policy or under the dictates of its antiterrorist legislation. In fact unilateral control of the system in theory gives one country the unacceptable power to cut off a whole country from Internet access.

Brazil's representative to the Prepcom denounced that in the current situation, there is an undemocratic decision-making process on how the Net is being administered, a lack of transparency in who is making decisions, and insufficient participation of the international community.

Combined WHOIS Task Force List

2005-02-28T20:09:00.000-05:00

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A new combined Whois task forces 1&2 and 3 list has been created. All task force 1,2 & 3 members and ICANN staff have been transferred to the new list.

The archives may be found at: http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-dow123

At the GNSO Council meeting on February 17, 2005, Bruce Tonkin proposed working closely with the GNSO Policy Officer to develop a single document combining Whois task forces 1, 2 1/2 and 3 discussions. This document would incorporate the material required in a task force
report as defined in the bylaws, such as the constituency statements, current recommendations, and degree of support for the recommendations (including where necessary a summary of majority and minority positions). It would also include a summary of documentation on the
Whois issues using documents already prepared over several years, and identify which aspects of the WHOIS issues fit into the mission of ICANN.

Bruce Tonkin proposed that the combined WHOIS task forces meet as a group fairly regularly in the period prior to the Mar del Plata meetings to focus on the Whois issue working from one document and documenting the levels of agreement.

New At-Large Website

2005-02-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

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Sotiris Sotiropoulos has set up a website to support At-Large organizing for the ICANN Vancouver session (Nov.30 - Dec.4, 2005). Sotiris is a highly regarded veteran in the At-Large campaign and the website will soon provide all necessary discussion tools to organize a renewed at-large initiative. My thanks to Sotiris for this effort.

Pan-Arab Internet Governance Conference

2005-02-28T18:25:00.000-05:00

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ICANN Board member Veni Markovski writes:

You may have heard that Egypt is organizing in Cairo the second Pan-Arab Regional Conference for the WSIS from 8-10 May 2005 (www.wsis-egypt.gov.eg) The conference will discuss WSIS issues, with an Arab and African dimension, before the last round of negotiations in September 2005. The conference will focus on Internet Governance issues during day 2. Egypt is also hosting on the 7th of May, as pre-conference activities a Regional INET meeting as well as an IPv6 Forum workshop.

A Call for ALAC Resignations

2005-02-28T18:07:00.000-05:00

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From the ICANN General Assembly Discussion list:

Dear members of the At-Large Advisory Committee:

This request has been sent to each of you personally with copies forwarded to each member of the ICANN Board, to the At-Large Forum, to committee[at] alac.icann.org, to the ICANN Ombudsman, to the At-Large Executive Director, to the General Assembly discussion list, to the GNSO ALAC Liaison, to the GAC ALAC Liaison, to the Chair of the GNSO Council, to the Chair of the ccNSO Council and to the ICANN Vice-President for Policy Development Support.

I would like to begin by thanking Thomas Roessler and Esther Dyson for their service on the At-Large Advisory Committee and applaud their decision to resign in order to better pursue other endeavors. I now call upon the remaining members of the At-Large Advisory Committee to tender their resignations.

This is a vote of no confidence. I believe that I speak for the At-Large community when I say that your service is no longer desired.

The At-Large respects the concept of transparency; you do not. No minutes of any of your meetings have ever been posted. No MP3 recordings of any of your teleconferences have ever been provided. No record of any committee vote has ever been published. At a time when the world expects the entities responsible for the management of the domain name system to be transparent, you have chosen to operate in secret. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large believes in the exchange of dialogue with all parties in the ICANN deliberative process; you do not. Messages have been sent to you, through the ALAC forum, through your commitee e-mail address, through the General Assembly discussion list, and to each of you individually. You have chosen not to respond to the concerns and criticisms put forth by individual members of the At-Large community. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large continues to advocate for the representation that was promised to us on the ICANN Board; you do not. The ALAC has never once raised the primary issue that is central to the At-Large Community. Representation is one of the four pillars of the White Paper. The At-Large cannot abide by your ongoing efforts to substitute "participation" for the "representation" that is our due. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large Study Committee found consensus for the formation of a Supporting Organization for the At-Large. The At-Large supports the concept of an SO within which our interest can manifest; you do not. The ALAC has never once discussed the establishment of a Supporting Organization for the At-Large that elects directors to the ICANN Board. The At-Large cannot stand idly by while our interests are being ignored. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large understands its composition as individuals and organizations not otherwise represented by ICANN's Supporting Organizations; you do not. The ALAC now seeks to speak on behalf of Civil Society, a collectivity that is already represented by way of ICANN's Non-Commercial Constituency, instead of honoring its mandate to reflect the interests of the unrepresented in the ICANN process. The At-Large does not support the perversion of the ALAC mandate to the detriment of the real At-Large community. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large rejects the folly of fragmentation into regional entities; you do not. No other constituency in the ICANN process is being forced to subdivide into regional groups. We do not have an Asia/Pacific Business Constituency unit, nor a Latin-American, nor North-American, nor European nor African required subset of the Business Community as a prerequisite to formal participation as a constituent element within the ICANN process. The ALAC's dogmatic pursuit of an unsustainable construct demonstrates that you are unfit to serve the needs of the At-Large community. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large understands that you were required by the ICANN Board to offer "Internet-based mechanisms that enable discussions among members of At-Large structures"; you do not. The ALAC has failed to set up even one single mechanism for At-Large discussions. Discussions are that which occur between parties; it is not exemplified by a mechanism that only allows you to throw a brick-with-a-note over the fence into a forum. The ALAC's failure to provide internet-based discussion mechanisms is not only a breach of the ICANN bylaws, it is an insult to the At-Large on whose behalf you purportedly act. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large community has noted time and time again the failure of ICANN to post the minutes of its Board meetings; you have not. The ALAC has never sent a statement to the Board condemning such blatant disregard for transparency and has never acted on behalf of the At-Large to ensure that bylaws are being followed. When bylaws aren't being followed, when PDP status pages are never posted, when Issue Reports are not generated as per bylaws guidelines, when PDP Public Commment periods fail to materialize, this affects the At-Large that is denied the opportunity to effectively contribute to policy deliberations. The ALAC has done nothing to promote the interests of the At-Large as contributors in the ICANN process; we remain shut out of all deliberations. It would be honorable for you to resign.

The At-Large recognizes that the nineteen certified At-Large "structures" have contributed absolutely nothing to discussions pertaining to the domain name system; you do not. The ALAC continues to point to an ongoing certification process of at-large "structures" as a barometer of success; we regard it as a tacit demonstration of failure as no tangible benefits have accrued from this process and there has been no demonstrated interest in forming even one single regional at-large organization. If you haven't yet gotten the message, allow me to repeat it one last time -- it would be honorable for you to resign.

There are others that can provide advice to the ICANN Board regarding the needs and interest of the At-Large. While the ALAC has no defined term limits, it is clear to us that you have had your turn and sadly, your performance has not adequately served the needs of the At-Large; please step aside and let others get the job done.

Sincerely,
Danny Younger

WSIS Prepcom2 Wrapup

2005-02-25T16:39:00.000-05:00

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From worldsummit2005.org -- "PrepCom debate on Internet Governance":

Presentation of WGIG preliminary report - final report to be discussed at PrepCom3

24 February 2005. Today the focus of PrepCom debates moved from finance to internet governance. Markus Kummer presented the preliminary report of the Working Group on Internet Governance, and many government delegates took the opportunity to comment on the report, uncovering some of the deep lines of conflict from the first WSIS phase. The final report will be presented in mid-July and will be thoroughly discussed at PrepCom3 in September.

Most of the day was used for extensive comments by government delegations on the WGIG report and by their recommendations for its future work. Many of these comments reflected the deep controversies around who should control internet governance -- controversies which had dominated the debates on this issue in the first WSIS phase. Many governments, particularly from the Global South, felt that governments should have more say in the emerging system of internet governance. A lack of legitimacy of present governance structures was recognized and was assigned to a lack of participation by the international community -- with "international community" meaning "nation-states" or rather "national governments". Some countries referred to the internet as a global public good whose governance should involve all stakeholders but with a special role for governments.

Meanwhile Australia expressed the views of many government delegations from the EU and North America when it called for the reform of existing institutions rather than creating new insitutions -- which should be understood as a defense of ICANN and as scepticism towards inter-governmental mechanisms. The delegation urged everyone not to compromise on the dynamism which has characterized the internet so far, and in which the private sector has played an important role.

Bulgaria enriched the debate by pointing to its own national multi-stakeholder forum which has developed well-functioning national policy and which could serve as a model for a global multi-stakeholder governance system. Venezuela urged the WGIG to focus on mechanisms for affordable access, while Samoa suggested that internet governance should be linked to development objectives, and that the deep connections between internet governance and policies by international institutions, such as the WTO and WIPO, should be looked at. These interventions underlined the view mentioned by the South African delegation, namely that the supposedly "technical" issues of internet governance are in fact very political.

Civil society delegates from several caucuses, including the human rights caucus, the media caucus, the gender caucus, and the privacy&security caucus had collaborated on a statement which was coordinated by the internet governance caucus and which had been endorsed by the general civil society content and themes meeting on Wednesday evening. The statement focuses on the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, suggesting WGIG as a working model. It also emphasizes the importance of the rights to freedom of expression and privacy, cultural and linguistic diversity, and an effective participation of all people from all regions of the world.

After several hours of discussion, President of Prepcom Karklins made a proposal for the further process:
-> 11 July: Presentation of the WGIG final report, follwed by a common discussion
-> submission of written contributions by all stakeholders until mid-August
-> compilation of contributions by the President
-> negotiations on the WGIG report and the contributions during PrepCom3

This proposal was largely adopted. The proposed compilation is to be an "information document", not an official draft of the respective chapter of the Tunis document. Due to time clashes with an ICANN meeting to take place around 11 July, it was proposed to move the WGIG report presentation to 19 July. However the time plan is not yet finalized.

This current plan means that there will not be an intersessional meeting and that there will not be a "Group of the Friends of the Chair" (GFC) to propose a summary of the WGIG findings for the Tunis document. The proposed procedure reflects the unwillingness of several governments to let another closed GFC group draft an important and deeply controversial section of the Tunis document. It also addresses the concerns of civil society representatives about a possible inter-governmental follow-up process which may exclude civil society. However it also means that a lot of work is waiting for delegates at PrepCom3 in September. They will have to speed up negotiations substantially to achieve an agreement in time for the Tunis summit.

Mueller on Internet Governance Options

2005-02-25T14:38:00.000-05:00

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Milton Mueller writes:

The paper I gave at Prepcom 2, along with the presentation slides of Hans Klein, are now available on the IGP site. http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/MM-Prepcom2.pdf

The paper sets out 2 particular proposals: 1) a framework convention to preplace US oversight, which also implies abolishing GAC within ICANN, and 2) a form of "institutional competition" between ICANN and ITU in which ITU is given an IPv6 address block and administration of the root zone file is shared between ICANN and any ccTLDs who prefer ITU administration over ICANN.

Either of these reform proposals could be enacted independently of the other, or both could be enacted. Both are controversial and politically difficult. However, I do not agree with Bret that either is politically impossible in the long term. Bret of course could be right and I could be wrong, it is an empirical question. But we can say for sure that if neither CS nor anyone else has a specific position to advocate nothing will change.

Bret Fausett on US control of the root

2005-02-25T14:28:00.000-05:00

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Replying to the question, "What do you replace [the USG-controlled root] with?", Bret Fausett writes:

"And, even if an adequate replacement existed, how would you convince the USG to transfer root authority to the replacement? One of my only other posts on this list set out what I believed to be the best practical step forward on this issue (a trust, with the USG holding a reversionary interest if something went wrong). Personally, I am convinced that the USG will never give up complete control over the root zone as originally contemplated by the ICANN process. So you either play practical politics (e.g., the trust idea), resign yourself to the USG's ultimate control (not acceptable to most), or take steps to split the root (not acceptable to most)."

Severe Criticism of WGIG Unleashed

2005-02-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

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Federico Heinz, writing on the CS-Plenary list states:

Hard as I try, I can't figure out why anybody would endorse and commend the multi-stakeholder approach taken at WGIG, when WGIG's output has been, in one admittedly rude word, crap. I have not read all of the papers, but I have read a statistically representative sample of it, and their quality can only be described as abysmal, they are full of factual and conceptual errors, the comment process was fundamentally flawed (10 days to comment on a large number of papers that had taken months to draft), and no formal correction or discussion process outside the group of "experts". This is an unmitigated disaster, why would we want to endorse it?

Update on Response to Homograph Concerns

2005-02-25T09:17:00.000-05:00

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Gary Karp on the Registry Constituency's IDN statement:

One of the Unicode Consortium's responses to the current situation was the release of an unscheduled revision of a draft technical report on 'Security Considerations For The Implementation Of Unicode And Related Technology'. You will find it at:

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr36/tr36-2.html

This includes a richly illustrated 'everything anyone could possibly need to know' description of the homograph vulnerability. Unfortunately, it is as useful a how-to-do-it guide for malicious abusers as it is a basis for the TLD registries converging on a best-practice. It sketches a clear path along which we can proceed and highlights the urgency of our doing so. Determining whether or not that path is the best one for the gTLD registries to take (and if not, setting the alternative) is the next step in our constituency's action.

The Unicode draft is, however, nothing for the faint-hearted. The basis of IDN,is that every internationalized name exists in two formats, of which the one is displayed to the user in the full array of expected characters (Unicode), and the other is an encoded form (Punycode) that is only intelligible to purpose-designed software.

The initial design intent was for Punycode never to be revealed to users. However, a number of situations where it is, in fact, beneficial for a user to see Punycode have become apparent in the interim. One of them is that two names that may be graphically confused in their Unicode forms (the reason we're having this discussion in the first place) can readily be differentiated in Punycode.

I'll try to prepare a Punycode Primer over the weekend, which should make the Unicode draft more accessible. It is up to us to ensure that nobody feels the need for more drastic measures. Although an elegant mode for the parallel presentation of Unicode and Punycode remains to be developed, encouraging action toward that end is clearly in the interests of any agency striving to globalize the Internet. Conversely, there is also a need to quell what remains the clear risk of the proponents of an anglophone DNS deciding that since they don't want/need/trust IDN, nobody gets to have it.

Report from WSIS Prepcom 2

2005-02-24T13:14:00.000-05:00

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Third and Fourth Plenary Meetings of PrepCom 2 – Internet Governance – February 24th 2005

1. Adoption of the Agenda
2. Preliminary report of the WGIG – first findings of the WGIG on March 23rd and an open- ended meeting on April 18th and another open-ended consultation on June 14th and a suggested longer meeting on Internet Governance in July.

a. Comments from the floor:

Brazil, Moldova, Argentina - lack of democracy in the way the Internet is being governed. In need of a more transparent, multilateral governance of the Internet. The need for cheaper access. There is moreover a need to take into account the public policy issues.

EU – negotiations should be open and inclusive.

Russia: Too early to talk about findings.

Cuba: Internet governance must be accompanied by more transparency and democracy in order to bridge the digital gap and use ICT4D. WGIG should aim at putting down
the basis for full participation of all governments.

Norway: recommendation: ensure that Internet can continue to contribute to cultural, social and economic dev, and that tolerance, democracy and HR become fundamental for an information society.

India: All-inclusive democratic multi-stakeholder access to the information and Internet governance.

Switzerland: the issues of transparency and security should be more emphasised by WGIG.

China: wish WGIG to move from fact-finding phase to fact-implementation phase. Internet governance should be multi- lateral, transparent and democratic with full involvement of governments. Private sector and CS should also play a vital role in the development of the Internet. 1/10 of the world’s Internet users are Chinese…

Ghana: support initiatives to develop local content on the Internet to prevent language barriers.

There was some division of full support for multistakeholder inclusion.

3rd Plenary Session: 24th February 2005 15.00 – 17.00

There were 35 government interventions plus other stakeholders who commented upon the
Preliminary Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance. All interventions will be
available on the web. However, it can be concluded that most were happy with the work
produced by WGIG especially in consultation with other stakeholders. They want the process to
continue to be as open and transparent moving towards PrepCom III

The final deadline for this report was set originally to be Tunis.

Janis Karklins proposed that the final proposed document from the WGIG will be presented at a meeting to be set up 11th July (the day before the ITU council meeting in Geneva) this meeting
will also be broadcast on the web. Following this presentation there will be a virtual interchange of comments open to all stakeholders. At this point all stakeholders are also welcome to submit editorial suggestion towards chapter 3.

The deadline for these comments will be mid (15th) August. Allowing enough time for them to
be submitted to the Secretary-General’s office and then translated before the deadline by
which documents must be published, 4 weeks before the start of PrepCom III.

No intersessional.

Subcommittee deliberations on operational part chapter 2 – 24.2.05 – 17.00 -?

A huge amount of contributions to the text have been submitted, which will both make it more
difficult to reach an agreement and make it a better document. The readings of today and tomorrow will (obviously) be the last reading of this summit. Negotiations will continue at 19.00 onwards and possibly also tomorrow morning if no consensus is reached.

On the deliberations on paragraph 27, which were suspended last night – the proceedings have
now been finalized as the language/reservations voiced by Azerbaijan and India last night,
have now been withdrawn.